


Meliorism

by Budinca



Series: Welter [2]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Amateur Spelunking, Cooking, Falling In Love, Flambé Warning, Kittens, M/M, sick days, train trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4789682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Budinca/pseuds/Budinca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and pieces of an age at which cat food achieves a higher priority than weekly groceries. Seasoned and spiced with vague melancholy, changes of mind, an unhealthy amount of smiling, first jobs, cooking experiments, travelling, and - overall - changes for good (and maybe also for the better).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me·lio·rism /ˈmiːlɪərɪz(ə)m/  
>  _n._  
>  1\. the belief that the world can be made better by human effort.  
> 2\. the belief that there is an inherent tendency toward progress or improvement in the human condition.
> 
> It's a vague anniversary, so I have an excuse for this.  
> Also, the mood-setting playlist [here](http://8tracks.com/budinca/meliorism). Both of these were fun to make.

_The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,_

_It isn't just one of your holiday games;_

They had put her right in his arms. Bid a swift farewell and wished him as much good luck as he could carry, along with the cat, and seemed to disappear in an instant. He wasn’t ready for this.

He didn’t have food, he didn’t have medicine, he didn’t have a litter box or a bed or even a tiny toy-mouse for her to play with. All he had was the kitten in his arms, an uncomfortably heavy backpack on his shoulders, and by far not enough money in his wallet or in his bank account.

It wasn’t really clear to him what had made him act this way. Still, one ought to look on a bright side. Assuming an air of reassurance and calmness, he unstuck the cat’s claws from his sweater and raised her to eye-level, in the middle of the street.

“It’s going to be okay,” Kaworu told her, looking into the big blue specs she had for eyes.

 

Naturally, he had to stop at a pet shop on his way home. The kitten, small thing that she was, clung desperately to his chest, seemingly more terrified of life than _he’d_ ever been. At some point, on the bus, she’d started meowing, although it sounded more like wailing now.

The shopkeeper gave him a bizarre look while he gathered pouches of kitten food with one hand and held the trembling kitten with the other. Granted, she hadn’t stopped wailing, and it was possible that he had started rocking her in his arms as one would have done with an infant.

Two pouches. It was impossible for him to carry more than that up to his apartment even if he’d had the money for it. For now, it would have to do.

 

  _Before a Cat will condescend_

_To treat you as a trusted friend,_

_Some little token of esteem_

_Is needed, like a dish of cream;_ 1  


At least his apartment was quiet. Not in one of its best days, but it was home, and it was warm, and it had a lot of soft surfaces where the cat could be deposited while he re-evaluated his life. Actually, there was no time for that; there were kittens to be fed.

The sudden change of environment had managed to surprise her into silence, at least. Kaworu placed her carefully in the middle of his bed, and she instantly started nuzzling around his sheets. It only took a moment for him to go, take a plate out of a cupboard and pour half the contents of a cat food pouch into it, but when he turned back to her, she suddenly seemed even smaller than before. Now he remembered.

 _She was way too little to be left there_ , he thought, approaching the bed with the plate in his hands. Even if they would have taken her to a nice shelter, and even though there would have been people to look after her there, she was still too small.

“Hello,” he said, slowly seating himself on the edge of the bed.

She was inspecting one of the purple suns on his sheets and seemed unwilling to give him any attention. Kaworu watched her for a while, and then gave her side a tentative poke. Since no disastrous effects followed, he did it again, and again, until poking turned to petting and he kept at it until she started pushing her head into his palm.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked and almost shifted the plate from his knees to his bed before stopping himself. Well, neither of these was an especially good idea; he hadn’t yet changed and he’d only just done laundry the other day. “Okay,” he said to himself or to them both, and carefully picked the cat in one hand, carrying her and the plate to an empty place on the floor, by the balcony door.

He put her down before she had the chance to get scared again. Then, he placed the food in front of her, nudged her again, in the right direction, and observed. The plate was bigger than her, diametrically. Still, two, three timid sniffs was all it took for her to attack it with all her kitty force.

Kaworu widened his eyes once she started growling around the food, but then blinked and left her at it while he finally took the chance to change his clothes. While wondering at the static his sweater produced once it was taken off, he glanced at the clock. Four hours ago he’d been arguing with his teacher over Mozart’s 20th piano concerto, vaguely worrying about some unfinished music theory notes and pondering what to do in order to save enough money to last him another week.

Now all of these had been temporarily forgotten, and he had a cat.

He pulled a T-shirt out of his bathroom cupboard and glanced back at the aggressively munching thing on his floor. He wondered whether he had a china cup small enough to serve as a decent water container.

 

“We’ll have to find you a name,” Kaworu pondered, holding his knees to his chest and watching the cat march around his apartment one day later. “Do you have any preferences?” She found a discarded piece of wool from one of his oldest mufflers and started rolling around the floor with it. “Okay,” Kaworu said, quietly, and held his knees closer.

Earlier this day, he’d managed to come back home with a litter box, some sand, more diverse food, and a small bag of what were presumably next week’s groceries. Upon checking all his drawers for scraps of pretty much anything, he’d also found two unopened bags of rice. There was cause for rejoicing.

He kind of wished he’d got her some toy, but he’d forgotten. Still, she seemed happy enough to laze around in his sweaters, if needed. She was so small, and grey, and fuzzy. Her fur seemed to stick up in all possible places, like an earthly blowfish. When he’d tried to pet her earlier, she’d turned on her back and started biting his fingers without too much fervour.

A thought illuminated his face. He grinned.

 

He called her Tabris, because that was what his dad had used to call him when he was younger, and he kind of missed his dad lately. A week had passed and he didn’t feel quite so gloomy anymore. Plus, Tabris seemed happy, sleeping and playing and eating all day long; and it was such a nice thing not to stay in an empty room anymore. It was only his preference, there, Kaworu decided. It had been hard to live alone after spending all his childhood surrounded by siblings.

“Hello, what are you doing?” he asked when, moments after he’d locked the front door, he started to be escaladed by use of tiny, sharp claws. “When did you get so good at that?” he looked down at the cat currently hanging from his hip, and helped her up to his shoulder. “Now, be careful.”

She had an iron grip that had left its mark on his skin dozens of times already, so it was relatively easy to go around with her perched up there. First things first, he deposited his backpack on a chair and went to the kitchen to retrieve her food. At some point, she’d got the idea to climb down his arm as soon as the pouch was in his hands.

“You’ll grow up to be a professional funambulist,” he said, before taking her in one hand and placing her on the floor, beside her small and butterfly-patterned eating bowl.

She still purred when she was given food. It was wonderfully adorable. Actually, it reminded him of when he was maybe 8 years old and his father and his grandmother – or was it a neighbour? – prepared glazed doughnut holes for him and his siblings. They always almost seemed to buzz on their chairs as they waited.

Well, that had been some time ago.

 

* * *

 

It occurred to him only too late – that he didn’t, in fact, have anyone to share his double popsicle with. So Kaworu sat on the bench, looking from time to time at the children roller-skating on the park alley, from time to time at the ice-cream he held with both hands, for now. Lately it was so hard for him not to space out on a regular basis.

He glanced at the slightly bigger kitten who lay beside him on the bench. After a moment, Tabris raised her eyes too, an almost inquisitive look on her face. Kaworu turned back to his ice-cream and finally split it in two.

“Might as well,” he said, and made a few tricky manoeuvres in order to break off a bit of ice-cream with his fingers and then place it on its wrapper, in front of his cat.

It was vanilla, it couldn’t be too bad for her. She’d found and eaten worse things in his apartment.

“Do enjoy,” he said, and started his own popsicle. It was just a teensy bit too sweet.

This was his second summer in the city. The first had been kind of interesting, he’d just finished his 1st year of college, and things had seemed to work out, more or less. It had been new, to be alone in the city and not have anything mandatory to do. It had been liberating, at the time.

Now he was mostly bored.

Back when winter came, he’d made some plans, assembled ideas of what he was going to do when he actually had some free time on his hands. They didn’t seem quite so interesting now. It had been a few weeks, and he had done mostly nothing during them, apart from dealing with the college withdrawal papers and spending too much time sitting still.

It felt strangely familiar – the sitting still, that is.

“Are you having a good time?” he asked Tabris, after she’d nearly licked clean the wrapper. She gave him a doleful stare and, comforted, Kaworu offered her the rest of her ice-cream.

He was halfway through his, and watching in mute encouragement a small child being taught to ride a bike, when it hit him. Not the bike, although that might have been less painful. Biting into the wooden stick surrounded by frozen vanilla cream, Kaworu grimaced, and not only from hurting his teeth.

It was no wonder he had been feeling so complacent in his state of continuous lethargy and boredom – there was a time when he’d been used to it, after all. For a year or so, until his dad caught on to it, at least. Annoyance was as good a motivation as any other; Kaworu finished his ice-cream with what could be read as determination.

“Hurry up with that,” he poked Tabris gently on the head, and got up. After a stretch, he made himself grin. “We’re going to the Planetarium,” he told her. _And then to the Botanical Gardens, and the Flower Market, and we’re going to have our bicycle fixed, and go and get new shelves._

If anything, he wasn’t going to let himself fall down again; even if he’d have to physically force himself to move. Maybe he’d get a job. Oughtn’t be too hard after smuggling Tabris into an art museum.

 

* * *

 

Whenever push came to shove, Kaworu determined that it was time for a reality check. When he was little, he’d pressed several easily-impressed relatives into letting him arrange an iced tea stand at a make-believe yard sale. It had as much success as one would have expected of something like that, but it was then that Kaworu had learned an important life lesson: customer service was hard.

Now, many years later, he could say a few additional things: first, that camomile tea helped with nerves quite fine, after one had downed three mugs in a row, and second, that he was really glad he’d been in that _Peter Pan_ play when he was 11. It had taught him to smile in a way that didn’t seem to get on people’s nerves, and it had taught him to do it habitually. It worked to the extent that it actually made _him_ feel better.

This had probably helped a lot. Especially when his co-workers had started giving him weird looks at the sight of the row of empty tea mugs on the counter. Thankfully, that had only lasted for a few weeks, back when he had first started working. Apparently, camomile was also well-known for making one sleepy. Somebody should have told him that earlier.

Against his good manners, he’d initially thought that the coffee shop would be more boring. The first week had been a chaos of learning how to use the coffee makers. During the second one he’d been at a loss regarding what to do in between customers. The third had been an end-of-vacation nightmare, with long queues during his every shift.

It was good he’d started this during the summer, however. It had kept him busy, indeed – enough so as not to dwell too long on his undetermined leave of absence from college – and it made sure that, by the time his distance classes started, he’d have entered a more or less steady rhythm here. Yes, that was what he told himself.

He might have got a little emotional after his first pay check, realising that he could get something other than parboiled rice and weird-tasting noodles from the grocery store for once – the first time in two months. He could even get Tabris gourmet food, if he pushed it. (He might have been unprepared for the sudden and sharp decrease in his budget that followed enrolling into another college.) It was all good now. With a steady schedule, he’d be able to get back on his feet relatively quickly – and, most importantly, without any need to call home for help, money, or leftovers.

Reality check. Customer service was hard, demanding, and tiring even when Kaworu didn’t bring his issues with him to work. He ought to get a grip, restrict his intake of tea to only one cup a day, and breathe deeply. He’d been doing this just fine for two months, after all.

 

Kaworu had several people.

There was the old lady who came every other day at 4 o’clock and ordered hot cider, to whom he smiled with the lightness of knowing that his smile would always be returned. There was the tall man who’d first surprised him by asking for four shots of espresso and then proceeded to add five spoons of sugar and cinnamon to them. There was the businesswoman who came by once a week or every fortnight to get very strong, very hot green tea. There were several customers who’d been there when he’d first learnt how to make coffee and they had retained their sympathy ever since. And there was – well, the one he had kind of scared off.

 

“Um, excuse me. It was... three Americanos, two mochas and one double espresso, right?” Kaworu asked while checking his scraggly writing in the order-notebook. Usually, his writing was quite tidy, so this could only be attributed to the morning rush. “Wasn’t it?” he looked up.

Across the counter, Shinji was giving him a look of utter horror, of the likes of which Kaworu had only seen in deep psychological movies before. It made him want to give him a break, want to give himself a break, give him something warm to drink, a blanket, and a soft pillow, and ask him what his favourite cartoons were. Sadly, he could do none, and nor did he think that he was the right person to do this, or that Shinji would have liked him to. They didn’t quite talk.

“Three Americanos, two espressos, and a latte...,” Shinji corrected, without quite breaking his look of approaching doom.

A pause ensued like a sudden stop of background noise at night. “Ah,” Kaworu said, ducking to check his notebook again. “Oh, I’m sorry, I think I skipped a line halfway through. Sorry,” he said again, biting his lip, but Shinji wasn’t looking at him anymore, choosing instead to stare forlornly at the candy racks.

It had been two weeks of interacting, and Kaworu had done his best to atone for the bad first impression he’d made. So far, his most notable breakthrough had been a small, impromptu breakfast muffin, for which he’d been paid back anyway. Still, they met three times a week, and Shinji seemed to be required to go on quite a lot of coffee errands, so it probably wasn’t all that unusual for Kaworu to want to be friendly.

He grabbed three out of the six coffees he had placed in the carrier, thankful that there wasn’t a queue. “I’ll make them again. It won’t take a minute.”

“No, that’s really not –” Shinji moved his hands about for a moment, but apparently recognised the hopelessness of it once Kaworu started working on the coffee makers again. On Kaworu’s part, he _was_ movingrather more quickly with that effect in mind. “I was thinking that maybe they wouldn’t notice...”

It was _not_ what he had expected to hear, and the wry look on Shinji’s face was quite novel, so Kaworu paused for a moment to take it in and suppress a laugh. “Don’t worry, it’s not that inconvenient,” he said once he’d gone back to adding copious amounts of scalding milk to the lattes.

“If you say so,” he thought he heard Shinji mutter, but it was hard to be sure over the rumble of the machine.

True to his word, Kaworu was done relatively quickly, and without burning his hands or other necessary parts of his body. For his second month working there, he was doing quite well. Once all the cups were put in the coffee carrier, a relieved sigh got out of Shinji too.

“Er, extra,” he then said before Kaworu had the chance to try his luck at giving him another muffin or a cup of hot chocolate as an apology for the emotional damage. It took a moment for him to see Shinji handling his wallet.

“No, no,” he accordingly waved his hands. “Don’t worry, it was my mistake,” which statement Shinji seemed to take as a personal affront, the creases in between his eyebrows making Kaworu’s grin rather frantic.

It wasn’t a lie, either. He could probably pull off having wasted three cups of coffee, in the very unlucky situation that somebody wouldn’t come and order one of them in the next five minutes. No worries need to be made. He schooled his features in a more casual smile.

Shinji’s frown decreased a fraction as he lowered his hands, but the suspicious look was still there. Still, he eventually pocketed his wallet and took a hold of the coffee carrier without further arguing. Which was a blessing, because Kaworu wasn’t particularly good at that.

“Have a nice day,” he called out with the cheerfulness of one winning a demi-argument without too much effort apart from a well-placed smile.

From the door, Shinji gave him another furtive, accusatory look, and stepped outside. Once the door closed, Kaworu found himself grinning again. Then, he turned on his heels, catching sight of the thankfully-still-steaming coffee cups and crossed his fingers for customers.

 

* * *

 

“You really don’t believe in ghosts?” Kaworu asked, because it was important, after their third impromptu piano meeting.

Shinji, tugging at his scarf in an attempt to make it cover as much of his face as decently possible, was inattentively following his lead round and round the college grounds. It was frosty, and it wasn’t too crowded, and Kaworu wasn’t sure whether asking him out further for a warm drink was acceptable or not.

The scarf was very big, very soft-looking, very blue, and always in Shinji’s possession, as of late. It looked pretty sturdy too, taking into account current ministrations. Kaworu probably wouldn’t have paid more attention to it than necessary, had it not been for the palette gradient it formed with the darker colour of Shinji’s eyes.

“Ghosts,” Shinji carefully worded now, letting said scarf hang around his mouth, and giving Kaworu a look that indicated that he wasn’t quite sure he wasn’t being made fun of.

Kaworu nodded. “Ghosts. Do you not believe in them?”

After gracing him for a few moments more with that inquisitive look, Shinji eventually looked ahead and let out a particularly thoughtful breath, an overachieving cloud in the early November air. Waiting for the mysterious answer, Kaworu tried to warm his hands in his pockets, among two marbles and a pack of gum.

“Is this still about the Halloween cappuccino I refused?” Shinji asked, rearranging his scarf and following him between two willow trees. Theoretically, still college grounds.

For a moment, Kaworu grinned to himself, then made a detour to a pebbled side-alley. Unbeknownst to some, it would actually take them back to the entrance hall. “No,” Kaworu drew out only a bit, “I managed to recover from that,” he allowed himself to joke, assessed the damage, let out an interior sigh of relief. “It just occurred to me that you don’t look like a particularly ghost-y type of person.”

The entrance was in sight now; he’d actually have to retrieve his bike this time around. Shinji looked at him with something akin to something preceding a smile. It was new, it was exciting, and Kaworu felt his own delight get the better of him.

“That’s...,” Shinji puffed another thin cloud of breath, “...new,” he decided. _As good as anything_ , Kaworu supplied for himself. “I guess I’m not. I never paid them too much thought.” Although, a few moments afterwards, another unspoken idea seemed to pass his mind, bringing a wry expression with it.

Kaworu didn’t pry; he’d got kind of used to this. Instead, he directed himself towards his bike, waiting for him in a cold, frosty and kind of despondent manner. “Well, we had too many white sheets in the house back when I was little.”

“Just like you had too much cabbage and bought three tortoises that other time,” Shinji said, behind him now.

Hands hovering in close proximity to his bike, Kaworu stopped. Granted, he did remember telling Shinji that story in passing at some point, but that had been _weeks_ before. It often caught him unawares, realising that Shinji actually listened and remembered what he told him. Maybe it came from growing up in a big family, but Kaworu wasn’t quite that used to undivided attention.

“Yes, quite like that.”

Shinji hummed in a polite manner as he waited for him to unhook his bike; that, too, was really nice of him, Kaworu thought, feeling the tips of his fingers freeze on the pale green metal. Beads and trinkets tinkled as he pushed his patient vehicle out of its parking lot.

“Don’t you get cold?” Shinji asked after Kaworu had finished stuffing his bag in the front basket. “On, on that,” he gestured vaguely.

His fingers _were_ cold, Kaworu pondered, blinking. “Not really. It’s cold anyway.”

In complete agreement, Shinji pulled his scarf over his mouth again, muttering, “True.”

They went side by side until they reached the street. _It has been nice_ , Kaworu found himself thinking, in a rather more hurried way than his thoughts usually came. For an interrupted moment, he felt a dull, but deep longing for _something_.

From the way his boots were fidgeting, Shinji must have wanted to go home.

“Er,” Kaworu let his bike lean on his side. “See you again soon?”

Kaworu really liked his eyes. This had no leverage over the fact that he felt restless whenever Shinji actually looked at him for more than a second at a time. He gazed back, nevertheless.

It lasted until Shinji looked away, apparently constrained to do so by the need to reply. “Okay.” Kaworu went back to breathing again. “Um. Goodbye.”

“Have a nice day,” Kaworu grinned, successfully getting one last glance before they parted ways. Okay. Now only to be careful while going into traffic in this state of mind.

 

* * *

 

Truth be told, Kaworu had been feeling out of sorts for a while now – but he didn’t think it was noticeable. He was out of sorts most of the time, anyway, and he’d noted that people hardly ever picked up on it.

Which wasn’t their fault, anyway. It was hard to recognise something when you’d been subjected to it from the very beginning, Kaworu considered. Either that or maybe Kaworu was a better actor than he’d been given credit for by his 7th grade teacher – the one who’d made the unfortunate decision to cast him in the role of the antagonist.

Well, either way, Kaworu was out of sorts _now_. A little bit, just enough for his fingertips to grow somewhat numb.

Shinji still had his blue muffler with him these days – sometimes, Kaworu still forgot his, and came back home hoarse and sniffling – and the colour grew more vivid on the black of his coat and the dark of his hair. For a moment, then he dragged his knitted hat over his ears and Kaworu smiled absently at a hanging reindeer he’d been busying himself with in order not to stare at Shinji as he got dressed.

He pressed on the plush belly of the reindeer without feeling much of it and hoped the snow was not too bad. Then, since Shinji appeared to be ready to go, he made another two steps to the doorway.

The hat was making his fringe appear longer, Kaworu saw, and then smiled. “Thank you for coming,” he said and meant it completely. It had been a while since he’d had over someone he felt so _nice_ with.

Shinji’s eyes wandered for a moment, then his figure settled with a shrug. He was such a comforting person to have around, always the farthest point away from a disdainful thought. “It was nice to be here,” he said, and Kaworu thought of future visits and felt happy.

He felt his hands tremble a little and looked back inside, familiarity calming him a bit. “Tabris had a good time,” he watched her on the couch for a moment. “I think I’ll have to watch her sulk for days now.” Most likely – she seemed to do all the sulking he didn’t do on the outside, and to take pride in it.

The quietest sound announced Kaworu that Shinji laughed, and he felt his heart kick up a notch or two even as he turned his eyes back to him. “I’ll be back then,” Shinji said, smiling and looking into his eyes.

Lately it was kinda hard to tell when they had actually got here.

“Take care,” was the little Kaworu could say. There must have been some half-formed idea which pushed him forwards then – some incipient yearning to stand closer – but he didn’t realise it until they were inches apart.

 _Is this alright?_ Kaworu asked wordlessly, aimlessly, looking at him from that distance. On the brightside, they were, all things considered, closer. _I hope it’s alright_. And he only had one instant to think _he’s going to kiss me_ before it actually happened.

For a moment, it only felt pleasant, warm lips on his, more familiar than he would have expected of his first kiss. Then the world caught up with him and there were fingers on his jaw and he felt them trembling and remembered that this was Shinji, and there was a lightness in his chest that just about hurt.

It was wonderful, being able to feel this and realise that he was part of it too. If he was overwhelmed, it was okay. That much was normal.It was hard to tell, but he thought Shinji’s hands were trembling; trembling and warm and pressing ever so slightly on his cheek. Then Shinji ran his fingers through his hair and that was new, that was something that hadn’t happened in a very long time, and Kaworu wanted to laugh because it was as if a bubble of affection that had just broken inside him.

He hadn’t felt so much like a human being in a long while. He’d been doing alright, but he was happy now. Almost perfectly, and he was also afraid, a fear he only became aware of as their kisses dimmed.

 

“Take care.”

Shinji gave him another small smile and turned in the direction of the stairs, which left Kaworu with closing and locking his door for the night. All well-ingrained movements even with his trembling and slightly numb hands. Then he turned back to his now comparatively empty apartment, considered turning on the overhead light, but eventually voted against it.

Tabris was still on the couch, lying untroubled in the middle of it. Shinji had petted her nearly to sleep, Kaworu remembered. She’d been there ever since. Kaworu bit his lip at the thought, looked around the room, only lit by the moon and fairy lights now, and went over the events of his day. As he started with the morning, he found himself overtaken by an anticipatory hurry to reach the latest ones.

He let go of his lip only to grin at nothing, and to take in a shuddering breath just as he realised his knees felt a little too unreliable for him to be standing up. His facial expressions were kind of out of his control at the moment too. Suddenly, he made up his mind and went to sit beside Tabris. Immediately, he proceeded to poke her downy fur.

“Hey. Wake up, wake up,” he grinned even as he continued to torment her. “ _Please_ ,” he tried with no effect and eventually settled for simply ruffling her tummy. “Honestly, you’ll sleep through anything,” he said once she squinted bluely at him.

It was a familiar occurrence for him to speak to her whenever they were home alone, but now he witnessed himself go wordless even as he was prepared to say something more. A sudden spasm of emotion and remembrance affected him and he could almost feel Shinji’s face touching his again. How long ago had it been? Two minutes? Six? Ten? Kaworu simply pushed his face into Tabris’s fur.

 

* * *

 

 _Ducks…_ 2, Kaworu thought, and immediately grabbed Shinji’s hand to bring them nearer the lake. Shinji’s hands were always so warm; well, not always, but most of the time.

“If you move that fast you’ll scare them away,” Shinji said, a step behind him, and he stopped right on the point where concrete met grass. “They’re too small to be fed, anyway...”

He had regained that step now, standing beside him, but their hands still held together. His hands were also very soft, Kaworu thought. But not really; smooth, rather than soft – with calloused fingertips and palms.

Kaworu was counting. “Eleven,” he said, grinning at the ducklings just now falling back into the water. “Such a big family. I wonder if they’ll leave them all here.”

Shinji’s face was doing that thing it did when he seemingly thought a statement ridiculous but was having trouble figuring out what exactly was making it so. It was one expression he’d grown rather fond of.

“They must separate them at some point,” was Shinji’s reasonably hesitant answer.

“I suppose so,” Kaworu followed one slower duckling with his eyes. “Otherwise we’d be full of ducks.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shinji’s eyebrows rise and lower in the interval of a second. It probably translated to a dramatic intonation of: _Tragic..._. Kaworu had a hard time not laughing. At hand-level, he pulled his fingers away a fraction and started tracing the lines of his palm.

“So...,” Shinji started, looking at the lake, and Kaworu took the hint to start walking again. “I think I also saw some swans, at some point.”

No swans in sight, for the time being. Only the random pigeon-loving elderly. These cinematic effects of life were something Kaworu particularly enjoyed – on certain days.

“We’ll see. Cotton candy?”

There was a vendor, just at the corner of the alley. From what Kaworu could see with his contacts, it looked green. Shinji always slackened his grip around small children, with the exception of when they’d been to the Aquarium and held hands for the first time.

“I haven’t had breakfast yet,” he said, and Kaworu’s course of action was first to worry, because it was past midday, and then to put his thoughts on a sunnier path.

Accordingly, “I saw a small place from the bus a few days ago. What do you think about lentil soup?” Then, just to be completely informative, “It’s not far.”

For some reason, Shinji’s eyebrows were furrowed as he stared at the pavement. Then, “ _What are your views on wrapping paper?_ ” he mutteringly parodied himself, and Kaworu laughed. “I don’t mind it,” followed the actual answer, and a momentary tighter clasp made Kaworu swallow back his snickers.

Granted, the cotton candy machine and the small children were past. He tentatively ran his fingers over Shinji’s knuckles. “Can we made a compromise and get the cotton candy first?” he tried.

Shinji gave him a sideway glance, one that bore the most fascinating trace of amusement in it. “In a very mature manner,” he articulated slowly, ultimately choosing not to top it with a question mark.

“As befits us as adults,” Kaworu nodded, smilingly serious.

It made Shinji smile too – a wonderful thing. “Then, I guess, by all means,” Shinji made a gesture towards the vendor with his free hand as his other loosely intertwined their fingers.

Kaworu rejoiced, in a grown-up manner. He could have fallen in love with him hands-first.

 

* * *

 

Theoretically, he had nothing to fear – he’d looked it up online. Practically, he’d probably seen more flames at a campfire. It was probably all safe. Still.

Kaworu stepped back from the cooker and contemplated it for a while. He wondered. Ultimately, he put the brand-new barbecue lighter on the table and turned instead to the counter where he held berries and peaches in three different bowls. These were okay. After checking the time once again, he occupied himself with cutting the peaches into neat, medium slices. Then, he proceeded to wash the berries once more. Afterwards, he prodded the butter again, weighed the box of sugar in his hands, and gave his also-brand-new bottle of rum a few cautionary shakes. On a second thought, maybe this wasn’t so wise. He couldn’t be sure, though.

There was still around thirty minutes to go, but it wasn’t a particularly good point of reference, since Shinji usually arrived early. Kaworu studied the thick pan he’d positioned over the cooker once again.

The problem at hand was an opposition of ideas. On the one hand, he considered that doing this before Shinji arrived might be better, in case the result was poorly (and also in case Shinji would put his mature side into light and explain the possible dangers of it and thus make Kaworu abandon his dinner plans, but he wasn’t quite willing to think that out loud). On the other, this was all about the show – he’d heard – so he probably needed a witness that didn’t fear getting their whiskers burnt off in the process. Furthermore, it would look impressive and, no matter what he said, Shinji _was_ hard to impress.

Kaworu debated with himself. Then, he turned on the heat under the pan and went to measure out the sugar and butter. Shinji arrived just as he was adding peaches to the melted aftermath. Thankfully, he let himself in.

“What are you making?” he asked after peeping at Kaworu carefully adding slice after slice in simmering butter.

“A snack,” Kaworu said, adding the last of them.

Looking over while wiping his hands on a colourful kitchen towel, he saw Shinji crouched on the floor, bathing Tabris in unexpected love. Incredibly enough, he was wearing the paper-airplane T-shirt Kaworu had inflicted upon him a few months before. Kaworu mixed the berries with cinnamon with far more happiness than they provided.

“How was today’s rehearsal?” he asked because he liked to hear Shinji make that small sound of anguished discontentment whenever he mentioned this.

Said sound ensued; Kaworu smiled while carefully stirring the peaches. “It was fine,” Shinji sighed, and got up from the floor, leaving Tabris, from what Kaworu could glimpse, under a pretty dizzy spell. He could relate to that.

“What was it today?” He wondered just how soft the peaches had to get before adding the berries.

Instead of answering, Shinji first leant his forehead on Kaworu’s shoulder. “Mmm—” he started, shaking his head once for every added consonant, “—ozart.”3  


Not completely unrelated to Kaworu’s most persuasive expressions and words, Shinji had more or less got involved in music- _something_ with the Conservatory orchestra this spring. It involved symphonies and produced a lot of agonized sounds from him, something Kaworu had first found out through deduction and afterwards through tired midnight calls. He felt kind of bad for the persuasion part. Just a little bit.

Freeing his hand from where it held the pan in place, Kaworu patted his head a little. “Really, and here I sat thinking you were powering through Stravinsky again.”

“Ugh,” Shinji said, and Kaworu bit back a smile.

But then Shinji’s head left his shoulder and the freedom of movement reminded him to add the berries before they turned to mush in their bowl. He suddenly remembered that a well-underlined piece of advice regarding this had been that he warmed the alcohol a little before adding it. He poured a bit of rum in a plastic cup.

“ _What_ are you making?” was Shinji’s more emphatic question, while Kaworu tested the drink with the tip of his tongue. A moment later, he pulled a face at it.

“Do you know how I could warm this up?” he eventually turned to Shinji again.

Shinji, who didn’t seem any more trusting for his lack of an answer. He warily eyed the small cup in Kaworu’s hands, then the pan on the stove, and finally Kaworu himself, and then took the cup from him.

“It’s already at room temperature as it is,” he said, after a moment of cradling it.

“Yeah, well,” Kaworu took a wooden spoon and started stirring the ingredients in the pan again. They didn’t look too bad – that was a plus.

He glanced at Shinji out the corner of his eye, and wondered if this could still turn out impressive. _Either that, or it will explode_ , Kaworu reasoned. That would have been a little impressive in itself.

After a few minutes, he turned the heat off again, and for safe measure also pushed the pan to the other side of the cooker. “Okay,” he said, and looked at it.

Shinji was still cradling the little cup of rum; he looked at that too. He wondered whether he should have taken the ice-cream out before now. Well, his freezer wasn’t the best there was, so it should have been alright.

Shinji was looking at him too. “So... now?”

“Well,” Kaworu started, getting back to the moment, and took the cup from him. Carefully, he poured it all over the fruity not-yet-mush. He took hold his barbeque lighter. He glanced at Shinji. “Um, step back.”

Shinji did, expression torn between relief and wariness. Trying to stand as far away as anatomically possible from the pan and still be able to light it up, Kaworu prodded the lighter awake. Nothing exploded, and neither did it make any excruciating sounds. If anything, the flames looked quite undisturbed.

He and Shinji looked at it for a while, with the occasional glance towards the curtains and other fabrics in their proximity. Then, the flames started to die down. A few more moments and they were gone, fruity blend intact, but more imposing for its past hardships.

Kaworu looked at Shinji, smile more or less tentative. Shinji looked too, and smiled back. “That was – interesting.”

Kaworu’s smile finally settled down, but not without a little resignation. Not that impressive, in the end. Still, at least it had been fun. “Nothing burnt,” he grinned.

Which made Shinji grin too, and that was compensation enough for hypothetically burning up his curtains. “It looked very professional, though,” Shinji went on, which was nice, given that he’d seen Kaworu scowl at a drop of alcohol not ten minutes before. “What do we do with it now?”

Kaworu really liked that comfortable, blithe look in his eyes. A lot. “I also have ice-cream,” he said, and immediately turned to retrieve it.

He’d settled for vanilla, which was what he liked to have at home anyway. He’d also prepared two painted glass bowls for the occasion, one with green dragonflies and one made to look like a small aquarium from the outside.

Halfway through scooping it into the first bowl, his eyes rested on the still relatively full bottle of rum he’d acquired at high expense – literally. “I’m not sure what to do with this,” he mused, and when he turned to Shinji he found him scooping a blueberry out of the pan with his fingers.

He looked a _little_ bit guilty at being caught, but raised it to his lips anyway.

“Cat fingers,” Kaworu warned, as if his apartment wasn’t full of cat hair anyway. Shinji, knowing this, shrugged.

“I don’t know either,” he said and only then proceeded to wash his hands at the kitchen sink.

 _Well, some opportunity will arise in the end_ , Kaworu decided. Gently, he started adding spoonfuls of flambé fruit over ice-cream. In between bowls, he stopped to hand-pick a blueberry too, because he was too sentimental not to.

Shinji was in the process of finding an acceptable spoon in Kaworu’s drawer collection, but a smile still played on his lips at that. Adding a few more raspberries in the second bowl, Kaworu realised that they hadn’t kissed for the past week, and willed himself to remember to do something about that today.

For what it was worth, he sprinkled some coconut over the two bowls as a conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 _The Naming of Cats_ , from T. S. Eliot's _Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats_.  
>  2 See _Welter_ , [Chapter 27](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2469482/chapters/8117106).  
> 3 [Here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0x_dCrKd4w)
> 
> This ended up having two chapters because I was bad with the deadline, so the next one will probably also arrive in the near future. (edit: lie)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or: that one in which Kaworu's backpack was actually magic.  
> Alternatively: the one in which Kaworu gets sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular part turned out longer than expected, so I decided to give it a full chapter, since that way it would also be less confusing. A smaller (final) 3rd chapter will be added at some other point.  
> Thank you and enjoy :)

 – _Day 1_ –

Kaworu hadn’t gone on a trip since he’d started college – his _first_ college – which made it around 3 years now. Nor had he gone farther out of town than his childhood home in the meantime. Granted, that was a far way off too, but it wasn’t the same when one knew the view out of the train window by heart and when no sudden exciting stops and turns were taking place.

He hoped this trip would go well.

The train had left a little later than scheduled, which was still early anyway, but the wagons were still fairly empty, a fact Kaworu had seen while going through them twice in an attempt to find their  equally empty compartment. Beside him, Shinji was poring over one of their maps with a clear-eyedness one wouldn’t have expected to see at five in the morning.

 _Well, he must be used to early mornings_ , Kaworu thought, and craned his neck to look out of the hallway window. Woods; a tall, dense patch of pine forest that seemed to stretch for quite a long area. Out of the window at Shinji’s right, he could see the dark-blue buildings of the city left behind, followed now by gradually expanding fields. Mostly, he saw them spotted with gray puddles; it had rained hard for the last two days.

Without closing the map, Shinji glanced at him, so Kaworu smiled in response and leant back in his seat. He would have said something, but the next moment Shinji’s eyes went back to their carefully outlined route and so he didn’t.

The compartment smelt musty; he wasn’t sure whether it came from the seats or from the walls. It was, considering, a pretty old train. It still made that dull sound of wheels tumbling over each other. At least, that’s what Kaworu imagined it was when he was little. Against his better judgement, he was sleepy. He had never been able to sleep well before going somewhere, his mind choosing instead of exhaust itself by wishing the remaining hours till departure gone, and by imagining what would come after.

When he was little, his dad usually ended up carrying him back to their rooms in the middle of the day, where he would sleep until evening and miss all the first day’s excitement. Kaworu couldn’t be sure, but he hoped he’d grown out of that phase.

“So,” Shinji said, waking him from the lethargy he hadn’t even been aware he’d been engulfed in. They hadn’t spoken since they’d got small cups of scalding coffee from a machine near the platform, so it must have had enough time to settle in. “If it rains when we get here,” and Kaworu followed his finger to see him point at a red-encircled first destination, “do we get tickets for the evening train or do we stay overnight?”

It was a point they hadn’t yet settled; their plans were dotted with them. Looking abstractly at the seats across from them, Kaworu hummed. “Let’s stay overnight.” Then he pored over the map too and assessed the distance to their second big stop. “If we get the evening train, we probably won’t get here until 11, and even if we find a room near the station, it would take a while, and then all the shops would be closed, so no dinner.”

Shinji seemed to think that through. “We _could_ take an earlier train.” But then he glanced over and the look Kaworu was giving him must have been effective, because he let out a laugh and shook his head. “Okay, we’ll stay.”

_Yay_. Kaworu wasn’t adamant about anything but that they took time to visit each location. He’d even planned it so that they had an hour to spare even when they only had to transfer. Come to think of it, they had to switch trains in just a couple of hours. Hopefully, this would give them enough time to get a decent breakfast. That instant coffee taste was hard to get rid of.

Finally, Shinji folded back the map, and leant back in his seat with a small sigh. “I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

Kaworu turned to look at him, mostly because those were pretty unusual words, coming from him. “That’s okay,” he said anyway. “I’ve brought a rain coat.”

After a look of surprise, Shinji raised his eyes to squint suspiciously at their belongings stacked above. “ _Where_?”

Somewhere deep enough in his rucksack to make it utterly inaccessible and thus useless. Still, Kaworu grinned and withheld his answer, if only because he liked to see Shinji give him that unimpressed look he’d grown fond of during the time they’d known each other.

Soon enough, the compartment lightened, and Kaworu realised it was because they’d finally moved past the forest. The fields were much larger now, on each side of them, and the rainwater was only collected at the margins, blue-gray and shivering in the wind. After a few minutes of staring at old wheat fields, Kaworu felt Shinji’s hand press a little on his, and he turned to see a pink and orange sun rise against the clouds on the horizon.

There was something like relief apparent on Shinji’s face then, even if the sunrays weren’t quite reaching them. It was actually an easy thing to feel, and Kaworu moved his hand so he could clasp his too.

 

Taking into account the fact that it was only September, Kaworu had decided not to go as far as wearing a sweater on the train ride. Granted, he had two or three in his rucksack, somewhere close enough to his raincoat to be irrelevant at the moment.

After a bland breakfast in a small train station and a further two-hour ride through mild rain, they arrived at their first key destination. Consequently, Kaworu was freezing, his cardigan not quite effective in the face of the steady wind they found there. At least it wasn’t raining, for the time being.

They hadn’t expected to be able to see the strand from the station, though. Judging by how still he was, in the midst of the loose gray hoodie he’d worn all morning, Shinji must have been cold too, but his eyes were fixed on the dark waves of the ocean.

“Let’s go there,” Kaworu said, signalling to the sandy strand, and, against better judgement, offered him his hand.

At least, Shinji looked suspicious. “There?” Granted, the rational course would have been finding lodging or a place to leave their heavy rucksacks first. Still, taking a couple of steps closer, Shinji took his hand nevertheless. “You’ll catch a cold,” he said, presumably becoming aware of Kaworu’s frozen fingers.

“I won’t catch a cold,” he said in as cheery a voice as possible with the wind blowing against his face.

After crossing a street and going down a narrow alley, they were on what could sometimes be considered a beach. With the gray clouds hanging overhead, close to the earth, it barely held any resemblance to one.

“It’s pretty dry,” Shinji remarked upon kicking a bit at the sand.

That also entailed that said sand could be swished around by the steadily stronger wind. That couldn’t be too good for his contact lenses, Kaworu knew. Also, it might not have a too pleasant effect on their sneakers either. All things considered, he advanced anyway.

Soon enough, Shinji took his hand back, the wind being a bit too much, and started going on a path of his own on the strand. Kaworu first looked around for seashells, then for dried crabs, and in the end settled for getting closer to the water. Maybe he’d have better luck there.

By then, Shinji was a good distance away, seemingly trying to walk on a straight line parallel to the shore. He had his back to Kaworu, and his sleeves were slightly billowing in the wind, as was his hair, though he kept it relatively short. Kaworu’s hand twitched at his side, and the next moment he carefully took a small camera out of his pocket. After taking a hasty picture, he checked the sand for shells once more, and skipped in that direction.

When he’d caught up, Shinji gave him a look that made him want to take another picture, but that would have probably had his camera confiscated on the spot. Apparently, however, Shinji was more practical in his approach to the strand. For one thing, he was walking with his back to the wind.

“It’s not so bad,” Kaworu said, because it wasn’t, really.

“No,” was Shinji’s contribution, as he looked at the ocean. A pretty ambiguous statement in its own right, Kaworu thought, and a few moments later, the same thought seemed to reach Shinji too. “I mean – no, it isn’t. It’s nice enough.”

He turned to look at him now, and Kaworu wondered for a moment how such gray surroundings seemed only to make his eyes bluer. Afterwards, he smiled. “It’s quiet, at least.”

Which was true, in a weird sense. The waves, combined with the wind, were almost deafening at times, but no other sounds appeared to pierce them. A year before, Kaworu had said that he wanted to travel somewhere quiet, and, even if maybe this was not exactly what he’d had in mind at the time, it was just enough.

“Yeah, at least,” Shinji grinned, something that came rarely and absently to him, and pressed their shoulders together. “Did you see any motels near the station?”

Kaworu mused for a moment. “I haven’t paid attention.”

Instead of a sigh, it elicited only another smile from Shinji, as he leaned even more on his side. “It would be better if we found one around there, but if not...,” and he jerked his head in the direction of the far side of the small town, where an illuminated sign could be seen in the gloom before what would probably be a midnight storm. Assuming it wasn’t a pharmacy, it should have been a hotel.

After a nod, Kaworu sniffed, which wasn’t too encouraging for their first day on the road. He tried to mask it by blaming the salty air and the sand threatening to get into his eyes, but it didn’t quite work, so Shinji decided that first and foremost they’d look for a shop and get camomile tea.

 

It took a while, since the town seemed more or less deserted, as seaside towns do after the summer season has passed. Afterwards, looking at the steadily darkening midday sky, they hurried back to the train station, going up and down the small alleys around it until they found a relatively small bed & breakfast. Out of the six rooms it had to offer, they took one, along with some directions to a place they could have lunch at.

The rain started before they had a chance to do that, though.

“It’s not so bad,” Shinji echoed his words from earlier, feet on the bed and eating cheese crackers.

Kaworu almost gave him a hopeless look, but changed his mind at the last moment. Instead, he left his pyjamas half unpacked on his bed and went to join Shinji on his – mostly for the cheese crackers. Half a box later, Shinji finally pushed the rest in his hands and went to look for the immersion heater.

While he got through one more quarter of the crackers, Kaworu watched him check their backpacks while muttering about some lost mug. It took some manual work, but in the end that, too, was retrieved.

Shinji was halfway through making him camomile tea when they realised the rain had stopped. By the time Kaworu was again deprived of crackers and clutching a steaming mug of just-in-case tea in his hands, the clouds parted to let a late afternoon sun bathe the outside world.

It took a few more moments to actually take that fact in. Then,

“Lunch?” Shinji asked.

Kaworu first gulped half of his nearly scalding tea. “Alright.”

 

_– Day 3 –_

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Shinji asked, a couple steps behind, dry twigs cracking under his boots.

That, in fact, was a good question. Kaworu openly mused over it, but only because, being in the lead, his face was out of sight. “Sure,” he eventually decided. “Sometimes dad took us _scavenging_ for mushrooms. You know, there’s a wood pretty close by to where I used to live.”

Fact. Shinji didn’t question that. Instead, what really piqued his curiosity was, “Did he really let you eat them afterwards?”

Kicking a few pinecones out of his path, Kaworu shuddered. “Of course not.” To begin with, half of said mushroom bounty eventually turned out to be slugs by the end of the day. “It was still valuable ranging experience, though.”

“No doubt about that,” Shinji said in that muttering tone he generally adopted when there was a big optimism disparity between them, took a bigger step over a large tree root, and continued walking at his side.

A few more steps later, Kaworu gave in and glanced at him, just to assess the damage three hours of relaxed hiking had done to his mood. Contrary to his tone and Kaworu’s apprehension, Shinji seemed just fine.

“Guess what,” Kaworu said, now chancing a grin.

Shinji glanced sideways at him, and only asked after letting his gaze linger a bit. “What?”

“I’ve got raspberry crackers.” Then he stopped grinning, and he thought. “Somewhere in my rucksack, at least.”

At that, Shinji raised his chin and, after further consideration, his eyebrows, in a perfect show of theatrical admiration. “Our survival is guaranteed in case we get lost then.”

“Quite so.”

Overall happiness and safety thus assured, Kaworu’s gaze went back to the path. The last painted sign had been, well, a while ago. Still, he didn’t _feel_ like they were lost, not yet. Childhood ranging expeditions had given him plenty of confidence that he’d developed the necessary instincts for navigating in the wild. Or so he liked to tell himself.

It was still sunny somewhere overhead, at least.

Twenty minutes later, it was Shinji who took his hand and made him look at a point farther in the distance. “Is that it?”

Kaworu squinted. There was a blurry, reddish spot, some hundred meters ahead. If he squinted harder, he could also make out some smoke.

Well, it was red. “I think so,” he straightened up, gave Shinji’s hand a squeeze. “Good job.”

It made him chuckle, but it sounded pretty good-natured, even towards himself. The path ahead looked pretty decent, so they decided to keep a hold of each other for as long as it would allow it.

 

It had been dark for half an hour by the time they hiked the last rocky stretch of ground to the alpine hut. “It didn’t look so far away from over there,” Shinji panted, hands on his knees, as they both stared at the orange-lit windows through the rapidly settling fog.

“Well, we didn’t take into consideration the ravine,” Kaworu supplied, with difficulty keeping himself from lying down on the wet grass at his feet.

“Do we ever,” Shinji exhaled one more time, and started walking again, with visible determination to get a bed and a warm room in the next ten minutes.

 

_– Day 5 –_

Shinji was looking at him in a way nobody had since elementary school, when the teacher had told Kaworu’s class that they shouldn’t play around the broken water pipe in the yard, but they had, and they had all caught a cold. It was kind of like that this time too, were one to substitute water splashing with star gazing.

“I know,” Kaworu said, in answer to that look, and continued to cradle the giant mug of tea he’d got from the kitchen.

“How are you feeling?” Shinji asked, freshly arrived from a solitary morning walk (since the new developments had pushed Kaworu’s sleep schedule up to 10 am).

The linden tea was scalding and full of honey on Kaworu’s tongue. “I feel alright.”

“You’re a little flushed,” he pulled off his scarf and started unbuttoning his coat.

After briefly considering saying something sappy, Kaworu maturely settled for, “It’s probably the tea.”

Out of his coat now, Shinji started exchanging his decent navy socks for a pair of fuzzier ones he’d got at Christmas. _That means we’re staying in_ , Kaworu translated. He took another gulp of tea. It was probably a good idea, his health considered, but it nevertheless brought him down a bit.

“How is it outside?” he asked, watching Shinji also change his shirt with a more comfortable one.

“Foggy,” he said. “Cold.” He looked over from his bed. “Have you had breakfast?”

Kaworu indicated his steaming mug. “When I got this.” Toast had to count, because he was kind of dizzy and unwilling to move anytime soon.

“Good,” Shinji said, apparently taking pity on him, and then made his way to Kaworu’s bed. Kaworu let him feel his forehead without much preamble. Somehow, his hand wasn’t freezing; that was nice. “Okay, it doesn’t seem too bad. What have you taken until now?” Kaworu just stared at him. Shinji sighed, and slid off the bed, much to Kaworu’s disappointment.

Still, when it came to medication, Shinji always displayed an unexpected streak of talent. This time was no exception as, after a short while of looking through his rucksack, out emerged a separate bag which proved to be full of medicine. Kaworu sipped his tea.

In less than five minutes, Shinji had prepared his medicinal diet for the days to come, ordering tablets and pill bottles on Kaworu’s bedside. “Thank you,” Kaworu said after he had no more curiosity-related questions to ask.

Shinji smiled, and returned his magic bag to its rightful place. Then the magic words came in its stead, “I told you it was too cold last night.”

“You did,” Kaworu grinned, and placed his empty mug carefully beside his designated pills.

Long story short, they underestimated how cold it got in the mountains even long after the sun had set, but the sky had been too lovely for them to go back inside in time. Still, Shinji seemed to be feeling just fine. Next time his grandmother tried to coax him into thinking medicine was useless, Kaworu would be sure to point him out to her and make his point.

He kinda missed Tabris.

It was a little before midday, but he sent a text to check her mood anyway; this time, his lady neighbor being on a – much deserved, in Kaworu’s opinion – tropical holiday, he’d had to look for a new catsitter for her. It ended up being one of the classmates he’d managed to get friendlier with after switching to day classes together. Tabris ought to be just fine.

A few minutes later, he got the confirmation that this was, indeed, correct. By that time, Shinji had gone – despite a lot of distressed sounds on Kaworu’s part – to pilfer the communal kitchen for fruits high in vitamin C and one more mug to make tea in.

“You’ll thank me later,” he now said casually while peeling an orange. At least now he’d luckily taken residence on Kaworu’s bed, so he didn’t have to pine from afar.

He kept staring at the rather swift way he seemed to handle the knife. Shinji was the only person he knew that peeled oranges like apples. “I _am_ thankful,” Kaworu said, to distract himself. “You’re lovely. I just think you should take the chance to relax.” Without raising his head, Shinji gave him a look. “A bit,” Kaworu clarified, sheepish.

There was the slightest throb of pain somewhere in between his eyebrows. Instinctively, Kaworu raised a hand to feel his own cheek. It felt a little hot, but he realized his fingers were cold, for no apparent reason.

“I, um,” Shinji pursed his lips, frowning at the bits of orange he was in the process of cutting. “Strangely, this is actually relaxing,” he finished, wiping his hands on a paper towel. Then he grimaced again. “Not that it’s a good thing you’re sick. I mean,” he stopped as he caught sight of the gleeful grin Kaworu had sprouted during his mutters, and got off the bed. “You know what I mean,” he grumbled in a completely harmless manner and went to wash his hands.

A plate of diced orange was left beside Kaworu on the bed, so he stared at it. He’d have to take care of the second orange they had, just to see what Shinji’s reaction would be to the traditional method. For now, though, there was nothing to it, so he picked up a soggy cube and was delighted to find that it was actually sweet. The headache didn’t seem to dim, however. Kaworu sniffed, and looked outside the window. It wasn’t particularly sunny (the trees were too tall for that), but it seemed like a pretty nice day. He felt a little guilty, so he took another dice.

Shinji only returned after – his words – deciding not to drain half the cabin’s water supply in an attempt to make the hot water pipe work, and went directly to the radiator. Watching him, Kaworu went through half the orange on his plate.

“Do you need anything else?” Shinji asked after a while, leaning back into the radiator.

Kaworu stared at his plate, sniffed, and shook his head.

Glumness, apparently, was something Shinji was only immune to when it involved himself, because after a few more moments, he left his heating place in favour of coming to Kaworu’s side again. He rubbed his hands a bit, and only after he placed one on his forehead again did Kaworu realise he’d been warming them up for exactly that reason. Lacking anything else, he pulled a face of helpless appreciation in return.

“It’s not too bad,” Shinji said, taking his hand away, but on a second thought resting it on Kaworu’s cheek.

“My head hurts,” he admitted, because it didn’t make much sense not to.

“That’s reasonable,” Shinji removed his hand a second time, and they made a slight effort to tidy up the bed. Kaworu was careful to put the second orange in a safe place, for later demonstrations. “What do you want to do?”

The cold and the overall discomfort it brought him made Kaworu shrug, even though he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted. Shinji listed a few of the activities they had dutifully brought with them, like card games, books, music players, and a few evenings’ worth of crosswords. He shrugged, in turn, at all of them.

Finally, Shinji stopped, and Kaworu looked up from where he’d been conscientiously inspecting the scatter rug at the foot of his bed to see him staring at him. He barely suppressed biting his lip.

Then, Shinji broke the spell. “Can you...?”

He gestured at Kaworu’s legs, which he had kept cross-legged for longer than was necessarily comfortable. Kaworu blinked, and hugged his knees to his chest, thus providing Shinji (and the blanket he now swept from the foot of Kaworu’s bed) with enough space to slip in the space between Kaworu’s dejected self and the wall. Once there, he gave the blanket a shake, and fixed Kaworu with a look again.

“Come on.”

It only took a moment for Kaworu’s expression to go from politely neutral to unexpected happiness. “Okay,” he grinned, and helped Shinji drape the heavy blanket over both of them as they found a way to lie in the small bed without anyone falling.

 

_– Day 6 –_

They reached the clearing after only two mild detours to look at strange-looking plants and to find a small river. When they finally entered it, Kaworu felt like he hadn’t seen so much sun in days. Probably, he was right. Still, he walked through the ankle-height grass with more of a bounce in his step. It was warmer with the sun overhead and, although Shinji had wordlessly forbidden him to take off his coat, it was nice to be able to at least unbutton it. He twirled a bit, experimentally, and stopped prematurely to sneeze.

“Any particular reason for the outburst of happiness?” Shinji asked, nonchalantly taking off his own coat.

Kaworu grinned. “It’s a nice day,” he shrugged, hands in his pockets. “Sunny, crisp, and the air is clear, and cuts you like a knife,” he grinned more.1

It took a few second for Shinji to make the mental connections, and then he scowled, much to Kaworu’s delight. For a long while now, Kaworu had tried to coax him into indulging him with some lyrics, but the most Shinji had been benevolent enough to do in his presence was hum _Left Behind_. 2

“How did you even end up in composition?” he now asked, coming by his side.

“I wanted to get a little bit out of my comfort zone,” he said. Shinji stared at him with the look of someone not truly acquainted with the notion of _comfort zone_. “Not that it worked out, but...,” Kaworu continued, trying to make amends.

Shinji hummed in rigorously not-musical manner. “Do you want to go take panoramic pictures?”

“Yes, please,” he lit up, and immediately sneezed again.

At that, Shinji searched his pocket and took out a bottle of vitamin C pills, dropping a couple in Kaworu’s hand. “Let’s go, then.”

 

_– Day 8 –_

“Is that snow?”

It took a moment for Shinji to inspect the landscape for this new kind of menace. Finally, he said, “Yes.”

Kaworu felt heartbroken, and struggled to look and sound the part too, as he continued to study the mountains through the train window. “Why didn’t we go there?”

Shinji sighed, which was a really nice gesture, seeing as half his face was buried into Kaworu’s shoulder – making the most of an empty wagon, so far. “You caught a cold in 13 degrees weather,” he said slowly, as an explanation.

It did nothing to convince Kaworu; he sniffed. “If I was going to get sick anyway, I could’ve at least done so with snow around.”

There was a noncommittal hum from Shinji, and Kaworu shifted a bit in his seat, to provide him with a better head-rest, and thus the subject was closed and dropped. After having sprouted a harmless kind of fever on and off for a couple of days, Kaworu could now say he was feeling better. With a little over four days of their trip to go, he really hoped all of it would go away before he got back home. Tabris was never in a good mood when he was sick.

He leant his cheek on Shinji’s hair. By now, he smelt faintly of linden tea. “Love you.”

Silently, Shinji nodded into his shoulder, and then a more forceful jolt came through the train, making him knock his forehead quite hard against his collarbone. “Ow.”

Suppressing a laugh that most likely would have pushed him into a coughing fit, Kaworu petted his head a few times.

 

– Day 9 –

It had been Shinji’s idea to visit a salt mine, and it was mostly curiosity that had kept Kaworu from inquiring further. Now, however, the stairs seemed to go on forever, and it kept getting colder. Shinji had told him this would also be good for his cold. There seemed to be salt on everything he touched; Kaworu didn’t know why he had expected anything different.

“—so now somebody ought to go check on it later this autumn,” Shinji continued his story, a couple steps ahead of him, dutifully looking at the salty wooden stairs. “I don’t know anything about pumpkins,” he sighed.

“They go well with everything,” Kaworu offered. “But it’s nice that you have a pumpkin patch now.” Wistful images of childhood ideas passed through his mind.

“It’s far in the countryside, and it was my uncle’s idea, so I probably won’t have a lot to do with it,” he turned and started on another flight of stairs, which seemed to be the last one.

“Still.”

Kaworu wondered whether he should subtly suggest the idea to his father. It could turn out nice, or like that watermelon patch he’d experimented with a while back. He shuddered, and then barely missed a trip-and-fall as he got to the bottom of the stairs.

He held on to Shinji’s shoulders, nonetheless, and looked around. “Ah.” It was tall.

 

“Seriously,” Shinji crossed his arms, but it was probably more because of the cold than of anything else.

Kaworu was staring with unexpected pleasure at the – granted, short – bowling alley and the ping-pong tables. The fact that he didn’t particularly excel at either activity did nothing to deter his good mood. Almost unconsciously, he got into one of what Shinji sometimes dubbed _his stances_.

The same Shinji eyed him now with a dimly questioning look. Kaworu smiled. “Really,” Shinji said. Then he sighed and went on with his thesaurus entry, “Honestly.”

By now, Kaworu was grinning, a fact which only got more obvious as he followed Shinji towards the ping-pong tables. He was probably indulging him too much, Kaworu knew, but how often did one have the chance to do something like this a thousand metres underneath the earth? Also, if he had learnt anything today, it was that going bowling in a salt mine was definitely something he wanted to do in this lifetime.

 

He had won, but barely, and it was slightly owing to an unexpected sneeze that made his hand jerk in the right direction to hit the ball. No hard feelings. While Shinji inspected the tall, salty ceiling, Kaworu looked over a railing. What he saw was closely related to a miracle.

“Look,” he drew Shinji’s attention to a place some hundred metres below them. Shinji looked over the railing too, and made a small sound of surprise. Kaworu bit his lip. “I’m going to take you on a boat ride.”

 

Kaworu guessed he ought to be thankful for the years of carrying his cat around he’d had so far; otherwise, this rowing business would have turned out much worse. Especially since Kaworu had _volunteered_. Facing him, Shinji was sitting rather stiffly as he watched him go through several attempts at a steady rhythm. From that, and also from the fact that he hadn’t yet offered his help, Kaworu deduced that boats were not his favourite habitat.

Several metres into the underground lake, Kaworu stopped, and tried to make it seem as if he was not panting. “Are you okay?”

Shinji raised his eyes from the salty wood beneath their feet and blinked.  “Yes,” and he stared at Kaworu some more, “are you?”

“Yes,” Kaworu said, and looked pensively around at the lake. There were plenty other boats besides themselves there, but none seemed on an immediate collision trajectory, so he dared to take his hands off the oars. “Only, I’m not as good at this as I remembered.”

Visibly relaxing a bit, Shinji smiled. They both looked up, and the walls were dark where lamps didn’t reach them, and they were even taller from down there. “It’s nice,” Shinji said, and Kaworu glanced back at his face for a moment. It was such a warm and pleasant feeling, to see him smile in what was basically an ill-lit cavern.

Kaworu didn’t want to risk unbalancing the boat, so kept his movements to a minimum, opening his hand palm-up and reaching it towards Shinji. It wasn’t quite enough to reach him, but Shinji looked down at it then, and carefully clasped it in his own. His fingertips were cold.

“Why are there no romantic restaurants on the moon?” Kaworu asked.

Shinji’s fingers pressed on his palm, and his eyes were amused. “There aren’t?”

“No,” Kaworu said, decisively. “Because there is no atmosphere.”

Shinji gave him a moment to enjoy himself. “Unlike here,” he then retorted.

“Exactly,” Kaworu grinned, squeezing his hand a little.

The water seemed mostly still, but there must have been some sort of current that moved them about, he thought. They were closer to the wall than to the centre of the lake now, but not by much.

“I would move, but I don’t want to risk you falling in the lake with your cold not quite gone,” Shinji called him back from his scenery musings.

Kaworu blinked benevolently. “Why would you move?”

At first, Shinji gave him a look, as if he was having an internal debate with himself. Then, without yet letting go of his hand, he leant forwards, carefully putting one knee on the bottom of the boat. It would probably get all salty, but, in their defence, they had prepared for this, taking old pairs of jeans for today’s escapade.

For all his earlier nervousness, Shinji seemed to balance himself quite well, and his other hand ended up on Kaworu’s knee. It was quite a feat of dexterity, but Kaworu abstained from congratulating him, for the moment. Instead, he bit his stubbornly dry lips, and noted that the air in the mine had got them rather salty.

There was the slightest pressure on his knee, as Shinji straightened his back to be able to reach his mouth, but that was all. Kaworu held his hand more tightly. Keeping his eyes closed while on the boat, however still it was, gave him an unexpected feeling of motion sickness. Shinji’s lips were also salty, but they were his, and they were gentle, and Kaworu had long before developed a soft spot for whatever they did.

After pulling back, Shinji’s trip back to his initial place didn’t go nearly as well as the first one, and the boat swayed a little as he tripped on his feet, but in a minute they were alright again. One more second of thought later, Kaworu gripped the oars again, but did not attempt to move them. Instead, he gazed at Shinji, until Shinji deigned to gaze back.

“My cold is not quite gone,” Kaworu reiterated his words, though there was a small smile on his face that couldn’t be quenched.

Shinji shrugged, hands now in his hoodie’s pockets, and looking over the rest of the lake. “I’ll be careful.”

Kaworu had no doubt he would be. So, while he still had a hesitant sort of adrenaline tingling in his arms, he started on the way back to the makeshift harbour.

 

– _Day 11_ –

After the underground expedition, the 10th day had been one dedicated to museums. It had been a sunny day, and Kaworu had been allowed to go outside without his coat, where a couple of children had vociferously complimented him on his dinosaur-patterned sweater.3 It had been particularly nice that, after inhaling so much salty air, he’d more or less stopped sniffing, though there still was the occasional cough or sneeze.

On the 11th day, they went underground again. Or, rather, inside-ground. Kaworu didn’t feel comfortable calling it _under_ while knowing they had hiked upwards for a couple of hours before reaching the mouth of the cave. Well. It was a pretty impressive-looking start. Out of solidarity with all nocturnal beings they were going to stumble upon inside, he’d put on a simple, dark sweater before they left the hotel that morning.

While waiting for their guide, along with a few other people, Shinji took the opportunity to drop some more vitamins into his palm. It was lucky they didn’t taste bad, or Kaworu would have had a hard past week. They were probably on the second bottle now.

Beside him, Shinji sniffed – minutely. Kaworu directed a silent, surprised glance at him, and Shinji wordlessly tipped some vitamins in his own hand and chewed them as they watched their guide approach. Kaworu abstained from following his bad example.

 

There were more stairs, and narrow paths – and slippery wooden railings. Only this time it wasn’t salt as much slightly gooey water. Kaworu felt sorry for his sweater’s sleeves. The explanations about the history of the place and the various species that lived inside the cave were nice enough, and there were enough breaks on the equally slippery way for them to look around.

It was all beautiful, in its own way, and Kaworu was glad for having climbed the whole way up here, with or without the muscle soreness he’d got from all the hikes they’d made this holiday. It wasn’t, however, until the guide told them to keep silent and turn off their various devices that Kaworu actually got excited.

Mindful to wipe his hands on his jeans first, he got hold of Shinji’s shoulders – who had so far walked a couple steps ahead of him, as the path allowed – and tried to see anything in the darkness at the top. They walked a few more steps like that, slowly edging their way through a very dimly lit passage, and Kaworu rejoiced in the sound of thousands of wings high above them. When they stopped in the middle of the cavern for more information, Shinji at last raised a hand to where Kaworu had been gently drawing circles into his shoulder.

“This is perfect,” Kaworu whispered, looking up at the various colonies of bats barely visible flying in and out the darkness of the ceiling. The sound of it felt ancient.

Shinji leant his head back to look at them too, while also making a small step backwards, so he was leaning slightly into Kaworu’s chest. After a while, he said, “At least they’re not like pigeons.”

Still inspecting the ceiling, Kaworu let out an amused breath, felt Shinji’s fingertips slightly move up and down his fingers, and wondered whether it was tiredness or the darkness of the place which made him more affectionate. By the time they could finally move to the next gallery, Kaworu seemed to feel several degrees warmer.

 

“Are you cold?” Kaworu asked on the way back to the cave mouth, when people were more used to the path and, thus, less prone to fall if they didn’t watch their feet.

Shinji carefully stepped off a slippery stone, and glanced at him over his shoulder. “No. Why?”

Kaworu shrugged, and wished he had some pockets to warm his hands in, but none of his cardigans had been dark enough to wear in a cave. He was half-looking forwards to the warmth outside – at least, the warmth he hoped he would find there.

Against all this, a recurring thought made its way back into his head. “I want ice-cream.”

It didn’t even take a moment for Shinji to reply, stepping aside for him to catch up once the path widened enough for two people. “No.” Then, he scrunched his eyebrows in the dark. “Why would you want ice-cream?”

There was another shrug. “Crème brûlée, then? Do you think we can find some when we get back in town?”

The town, in this case, being nearly three hours away, two to spend hiking and one to spend in an old, rickety bus. That was, if they caught the bus on time; otherwise, they’d have to wait another hour for the next one. Strangely, Kaworu didn’t feel tired yet.

“Maybe,” Shinji said, and he didn’t sound too tired either, but there was something about his attitude which suggested low hopes for catching that first bus.

Well, then it would only be them, the woods, and the bats. They had had worse planned dates.

 

The mountain road’s effect on the small bus they were in – and they had caught in _on time_ – reminded Kaworu of the process of making blueberry milkshakes in the cafe. Once they reached a small patch of smooth road, he turned to look at Shinji, once again studying one of their maps, and carefully put his hand on his forehead, careful not to disturb his fringe too much. For a moment, Shinji kept examining the map, but then he blinked and turned to look at him too. Kaworu kept his hand on his forehead.

“Is it bad?” Shinji asked, without any visible discomfort.

He had to think for a moment, but he didn’t feel any peculiar heat on his palm. “No,” and carefully pulled his hand back. Kaworu was probably one of the people least acquainted with schadenfreude, but he felt a little bit of guilty excitement at the thought that he now had an occasion to do the coddling.

 

Accordingly, “Don’t forget to put on another sweater,” Kaworu dotingly said that evening, when they were getting ready to go out in search for the promised crème brûlée.

At least, _he_ was getting ready. Shinji had some uncanny ability of dressing himself in record time even when there was nothing rushing him. “Uh-huh,” he said now, sitting in the middle of his bed, engrossed in a text conversation with Asuka – about _airplanes_ , if Kaworu remembered correctly.

With one sock electric blue and the other brown, patterned with green oak leaves, Kaworu dug some more into his rucksack. He found the pair of the latter sock under an off-white sweater, and he pulled both of these out. For a moment, he grinned at the sweater, despite its lack of patterns except for heavily braided knitting, but he set it down and finished changing his socks before saying anything.

When he was done, Shinji was just finishing off another text. “Take this one,” Kaworu walked closer to his bed, holding the sweater up for display.

Shinji blinked at it a couple of times in relaxed surprise.  “Ah,” he said. “The hugging sweater.” Then his gaze travelled a bit upwards, meeting Kaworu’s with some amusement. “How many have you taken with you?”

“Three and a half,” he shrugged. “But I knew one of them was for you.”

A smile then started spreading on Shinji’s lips, but the chime of another text distracted him. However, this time he put the phone aside, and extended a hand towards the sweater. Kaworu happily complied, and laughed when Shinji decided to also take a hold of his hand as well as of the sweater, once they both got in range, and to pull them beside him on the bed.

While Kaworu got himself comfortable, he went back to the newest text, and sent off a reply with an air of closure. Afterwards, he stared at the lumpy sweater in his lap. “Three _and a half_?”

“Cardigans don’t count,” Kaworu explained didactically, then grinned and kissed his cheek.

It was long overdue, since they had been alternately hiking, spelunking, rushing, or just tired since morning. Thus, without pulling away quite yet, he pressed another kiss on his cheek, closer to his mouth. His skin was pleasantly warm, but not feverish, so that ought to be good news. Kaworu didn’t want to think he’d boat-sailed him into sharing his cold.

That particular worry must have been only on his part, however, because now Shinji raised a hand to his neck and brought their lips together. Kaworu had never been sure what part of kissing was the especially pleasant one, and his feelings had mostly been deep rather than strong during it, but the experience was usually a pleasant one.

It was nice, and a little funny too, that Shinji shared his (lack of) enthusiasm. It was nice that they had worked on it and, in time, learnt how to be and make each other comfortable, instead of sometimes feeling like they had somehow missed learning the ropes. It had taken a while, but it was okay, and Kaworu felt rather happy.

“Wait,” Shinji pulled away with a sigh, his hand slackening on the back of Kaworu’s neck. He blinked, and waited. “I have to put on the hugging sweater first,” Shinji explained, and Kaworu felt himself smiling with his whole being.

 _The hugging sweater_ was more of _a_ hugging sweater in their respective wardrobes, since there were at least three of them altogether. They were all particularly large, particularly soft, and particularly old pieces of lumpy clothing one or both of them had stumbled upon in yard sales. Shinji had been the first to – sarcastically, of course – name them, and Kaworu had made the name stick out of unadulterated affection.

“There,” Shinji said now, looking at the sleeves falling over his knuckles and at the overall cloudy presence of the thing.

Sheer need for equilibrium had kept Kaworu before from threading his fingers through Shinji’s hair, whose haircut was a week or two overdue, thanks to their ambiguous planning. Now, he adjusted his sitting position a bit, and did just that, gently pressing their foreheads together as Shinji’s hands carefully reached his back and pulled him closer. When they were quite close enough, Kaworu buried his face in the crook of his neck, and felt Shinji do the same before they eventually toppled over in a short fall to the mattress.

Kaworu felt like he could hug his own life away.

Instead, he settled for feeling Shinji’s heartbeat against his chest, for thinking that his hair smelt faintly of hazelnuts, and for feeling truly thankful for the sureness his arms had around him. He’d once told Shinji that he felt grounded, and Shinji had said that he sometimes didn’t feel solid enough to do that. But he was, he was.

 

– _Day 12_ –

“I wonder if she’s okay,” Kaworu sighed, leaning back into his seat. It was evening, and they were just passing by the ocean again, only on the way back.

“She’s okay,” Shinji said, running his index finger over Kaworu’s knuckles in a distracted manner as he checked the weather on his phone. “She’s fierce,” he added. “No rain this time. We can walk on the strand more.”

“Yay,” Kaworu said with exhausted enthusiasm. Then he poked Shinji’s hand back. “Can I take you out for breakfast before you catch the bus home tomorrow?”

Shinji gave him the look of someone who’d just had two weeks’ worth of meals with him. Luckily, that particular look happened to be an affectionate one. “Okay.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] [I Miss the Mountains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt09n4O-OrE)  
> [2] [Left Behind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBX6Rvd831c)  
> [3] Look up: Diplodocus sweater.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is very long overdue. Still, it's here now, and way longer than I anticipated. Thanks for the wait.  
> So here we'll have an equally long overdue meeting, a _special guest TM_, some more snow, because I have no self-control, and other various shenanigans.  
> Thank you for reading for so long, this has been great. I hope you'll enjoy this too :)

When the call came to his phone, Kaworu was busy vacuuming his apartment – a process peppered with apologies towards Tabris, who’d taken a vengeful shelter in the bathroom. Having to answer to unknown numbers wasn’t something Kaworu usually had to do a lot, but he guessed accidents did happen. Thus, he wasn’t quite ready for what lay on the other end of the line. Or, rather, for the swiftness with which the message was sent across, a meeting place found, and a time chosen.

“Um, okay,” he said, making a tiny note on his desk, encompassing all this information.

He’d somehow expected that to be it, but afterwards his unexpected dialler took a turn for the even more unexpected. “So, how are you?”

 

Winter was late to come, this year. A thing which would have otherwise seemed suspicious, were it not that autumn had started in August, getting colder and colder with each month that passed under its reign. Still, Kaworu didn’t mind. The lack of snow and the cold and dry air meant that he could still ride his bicycle to college and work and so on.

He didn’t have it with him today, for obvious reasons. Moreover, he’d been 10 minutes early, and now it was 10 minutes late. He checked his phone, and immediately put it back in his coat’s pocket, where it was nice and warm and his fingers didn’t feel like breaking in tiny pieces. He’d only had to wait a further 5 minutes.

“Saturday traffic is a nightmare,” Asuka huffed as a way of greeting, brushing the frost off her hat, and Kaworu smiled. “You look awfully cosy,” she narrowed her eyes at him.

“I’m freezing,” he said, and his frozen cheeks hurt when he grinned.

Asuka nodded like that was an acceptable activity indeed, checked her phone, and looked around. They were somewhere at the corner of a central shopping district, but it was too early and too cold for it to be crowded with people milling about.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t have your number, yesterday,” he started, by way of making conversation while she appeared to be planning a siege.

At that, she stopped scrutinizing the landscape, glanced at him, and shrugged. “It’s fine, I only asked Mari for it yesterday, anyway.”

Kaworu nodded, and since that was settled, he pulled out his phone to properly add her in his contacts. “Thanks for calling me,” he said while doing that.

“No problem,” she shrugged again. “By the way, now you can call me if ever you’re in need of a molecular analysis, or want to complain about Shinji.” Then she stopped, and gave him a mistrustful look. “Although it’s been over three years and I’ve yet to hear you do that, which is eerie.”

Kaworu grinned. “What are we buying?”

“If I knew, you wouldn’t be here,” she raised her chin, and made a step towards the shopping alley. “Come on, make yourself good company.”

 

Kaworu did. Or, at least, he hoped he did, since Asuka seemed to be in a better mood after she’d made him buy her coffee and told him all about the latest dishwasher accident Mari had caused. In the course of two hours, they hadn’t done much by way of shopping, so he guessed this was more of an outing than an errand. Which was nice – they hadn’t hung out together before, at least not by themselves.

“How is your master’s going?” she asked while they were in a café, waiting for their croissants to cool down. He grimaced, and she looked unimpressed. “Oh, I know that face. Well, you’re not the only one.”

He prodded at his hot chocolate, finding it hard not to have an internal monologue of how he could’ve made it better. Along with his postgraduate courses, there had also been a couple internship opportunities thrown his way, so he’d had to give up the part-time job. Well, he supposed this was a good thing, but he sometimes got a little nostalgic.

“It’s not as bad as I feared it would be, actually,” he said now. “What about you? I didn’t know you’d come back this year.”

Because, according to Shinji, Asuka had been having on and off courses abroad for a while now. Also according to Shinji, this was because her degrees took longer, and she was getting bored. Kaworu could only admire her, anyway.

“I’ve been around since September,” she sighed and leant back in her chair. “It was too warm out there, and Mari was constantly whining that I’d left her home alone.”

Kaworu smiled at his mug, and a moment later he instinctively looked up to see Asuka frown at him. “She took us ice skating,” he said, wanting to dissuade the tension.

It probably worked; Asuka blinked and leant back in her chair. “Did she? How did that go?”

He pulled on the sleeve of his right hand so as to show her the unexpectedly large bruise below his wrist. “I was too enthusiastic.”

Asuka raised her eyebrows in a weird sort of approval. “I can see that.” Then she finally deemed it safe to start on her croissant.

The fact was, Kaworu wasn’t especially bad at ice skating. The winters around his childhood home were always somewhat harsher than the ones in the city, and his dad had taken all of them to various lakes and rinks every winter when he was little. He’d been over-enthusiastic then too, but then the distance to the ground had been smaller. Furthermore, he hadn’t gone ice skating in quite some time before Mari came over in one of her weekend escapades and took them out.

Shinji had borne himself unpredictably well, however.

As if sensing the subject change, Asuka took a gulp of coffee and began. “I used to take Shinji with me to the ice rink all winter during elementary school. We usually went after classes.” Here she stopped, and let out a dramatically exasperated sigh. Kaworu appreciated the effects. “He _hated_ it. Or, well, he hated it the first few times we went, but we’d already tried it before – I, him, his cousins, aunt, uncle, a couple undetermined siblings – and he’d been better than many of them, in that slow, wary way of his, but still; and so I didn’t want to go around and look for skating buddies every week.” She let out a breath. Kaworu sipped his cocoa in fascination. “But you know how he is. He had to have the whole rink fall around him on ice before he believed that he was actually decent at something. Literally.”

Sensibly, Kaworu raised an eyebrow. “Did you trip everyone up?”

She gave him a proud smile. “Of course.” She prodded at the remaining half of her croissant. “We had Ayanami with us too, most of the time, but she just did her own thing while I swirled him round in circles whenever he got wary and klutzy again.”

 _Aw_ , Kaworu thought while having trouble keeping the grin off his face. “He did trip the least out of all three of us.” Mari had been in a kind of amused awe.

“Well, of course,” Asuka shrugged, and then gestured at him. “I mean, you have a map of Australia on your forearm, no offense, while _she_ –” she blinked at an invisible point in space. One more point for effect. “The only time I’ve taken her to a rink she ended up injuring two people and nearly splaying my wrist.” She took a sip. “We afterwards restricted ourselves to less accident-prone places.”

Kaworu was picking apart his own croissant. “I found aquariums to be adequately safe spaces; also, caves. Anti-climactically.” Not art museums though, since every time they’d gone to one something had fallen apart somewhere in the building, usually to an accompaniment of innocent, squealing kindergartners. It had turned into a tradition, by now.

Asuka dipped part of her croissant in her coffee, considered it, and regarded him in a new light. “ _That_ – might not be a bad idea.

“Thank you,” he smiled. A slightly more dangerous – but also funnier – crossed his mind afterwards. He was usually lucky, thought, so took his chances. He let his grin broaden a bit. “Has this been the _embarrassing-baby-pictures_ talk?”

With a look, Asuka let her croissant free-fall into her cup.

 

“What _are_ we buying?”

“Coffee crackers.”

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure she’s going to be okay?” Shinji crouched beside the carrier as soon as they were out of the train station.

Kaworu glanced from them to the – mildly – desolate landscape around them. “I’m sure. We’ve done this before.”

Visibly unconvinced, Shinji got back up; adjusted his gloves. “I mean, I could... carry her inside my coat.”

“It’s okay. It’s not that far.” For safety measures, Kaworu raised the carrier a bit to peer inside.

He hadn’t had a blanket small enough, so he’d just stuffed two older sweaters in there before ushering Tabris in too. As a consequence, it was a little cramped, but it ought to keep her warm. Besides, she’d had free reign over their wagon on the way here. A few kids had almost got their holiday candy stuck in her winter coat.

“We’re fine,” he reassured Shinji. “We’re set. We’re _brave_. But –” he leant over, pecking him on the lips. “Thanks for worrying.”

“You’re very arbitrary in your priorities, you know,” Shinji said, once he seemed to have convinced himself not to smile too overtly.

“There _is_ a logic,” Kaworu grinned just before pulling his scarf up to his nose. “On we go.”

 

The way from the closest train station to Kaworu’s childhood home wasn’t truly _that_ long. He sometimes took it during the summer, and it took him less than half an hour. More often, though, he just caught a ride with one of the various acquaintances his family had around there. This time, however, the winter holidays had just started a day or two before – the snow was, in places, up to one’s knee, so nobody bothered with cars.

Technically, even with the snow, the walk oughtn’t take them more than an hour. That’s why he’d kept saying that Tabris was going to survive their small-scale Vasaloppet. No need to worry. He could already see the smoking and puffing chimneys in the distance. They just had to pass the uninhabited fields first – that might have appeared a little intimidating to somebody making their first visit – which Shinji was.

Every now and then, Tabris sent a long, forlorn mewl into the snowy silence. She must have been a wolf in a past life; Kaworu was sure.

He had been mostly admiring the white, naked trees, and the premature greyish blue of the sky, streaked with darker grey clouds of smoke. Now, he glanced at Shinji, and found him adequately gloomy, considering the weather. The icy wind had reddened his cheeks, which was sweet. He rarely ever blushed, otherwise.

Kaworu pulled his scarf from over his mouth. “Do you see the yellow patch up there?” Shinji slowly shifted his gaze accordingly; a few moments later, he nodded into his muffler. “It’s orange, really, it’s just really subtle. That’s where we’re going.”

Shinji stared at it for a minute longer, then peered at him. “Do you want me to hold her too?”

He was gesturing at the cat carrier. Well – several pounds of cat and wool did, in fact, kinda weigh down on Kaworu’s frozen fingers; but he wasn’t sure he wanted to sentence Shinji’s to the same fate. He eventually passed it to him, nevertheless. Apparently, this was called _moderating his altruism_.

Another heart-breaking mewl. “Are you sure I shouldn’t put her in my coat?”

 

He didn’t, in the end, but it had been a close debate. Now, they had stopped at the gate. Several metres of snowed-in garden – Kaworu looked longingly at the place he had planted pumpkins the other year – separated them from the front door (i.e. warmth and a hot lunch).

His knitted hat had pushed his fringe quite down over his face, but Kaworu could still tell that Shinji was doing some extraordinary things with his eyebrows. As such, he waited for the decree.

“It had _three storeys_ ,” Shinji eventually said, with a pained voice.

Kaworu took a gulp of freezing air – his teeth immediately protested. “It’s old,” he started. “It doesn’t look like it now, but it’s very old, and not in the good way. It’s falling apart in places. We got it from my great-grandmother, and it was in worse shape then. It’s just _large_ , it’s not aristocratic. We hardly ever go upstairs unless there are more of us coming over. We would have moved many years ago but we, er, needed the space,” he let out, anxiously running his fingers through his hair. “Um, it has a lot of rooms.”

Shinji looked at him, pain still on his features. “ _Three storeys_.”

“And an attic. It’s musty and roomy,” Kaworu grinned nervously. Thankfully, Tabris then stated her ongoing disapproval of their discussion. “Let’s go,” he grabbed Shinji’s free, frozen hand with an equally frozen one of his own. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“I can’t feel more than that,” Shinji grumbled, because he sometimes got competitive when he was nervous.

Inside, the warmth was polite, gradually slithering in their direction instead of splashing over them. Tabris wasn’t patient enough to wait for it to come to her, though; as soon as Kaworu let her out of the carrier, she sprang down the hallway she still seemed to recognise, making a beeline for the kitchen at the far back. So maybe she just wanted her lunch too.

The welcome mat shortly became white with the snow they had gathered on their clothes and boots. It was only by the time Kaworu – wearing warm, bee-shaped slippers now – was dusting off their rucksacks, and while Shinji was reaching the end of his reluctant undressing process that the indoor air finally engulfed them.

Centimetres away from leaving his muffler on the coat hanger, Shinji stopped in his tracks. “It smells like cider,” he whispered.

Kaworu put his muffler away in his place, and then also took off his hat. “Either that or mulled wine. Dad still finds it amusing to get me tipsy for Christmas,” he said, softly arranging Shinji’s hair back into shape.

Shinji pulled a face eloquent in saying he wouldn’t have minded a few mugs of such concoctions himself at the moment.

 _He’s not so bad_ , Kaworu wanted to say, tried to say it with a look. He had a feeling Shinji had an instinctive wariness of fathers, given his family history, which was – well, Kaworu thought it was unnecessary in this case. While it was true that he’d got into a few rows with his dad in the past years, the matter in every case had been more philosophical than moral. Maybe he’d given the wrong impression.

Right now, he wanted to say how his dad started cooking whenever he was nervous, and mention the several occasions on which this had led to the entire family being overfed peach crumble and raspberry muffins in the past. He wanted to say how he used to hide with some of them in the attic whenever grandmother came over and started dusting the whole house. He wanted to say how across the years he had learnt all the opening songs to their favourite cartoons and sometimes one of them would catch him humming those while doing laundry. He wanted to say how, when he was 17 and got his first antidepressant prescription, his dad had been more worried that he himself was.

Then again, Shinji knew about all of these, bits and pieces, more pieces than bits – it was hard to keep it all in when they found themselves staring at the ceiling before dawn (Kaworu didn’t experience Shinji’s infrequent insomnia, but he had a good deal of empathy).

He took a deep, but impatient breath, trying to shake the belated homesickness away. It seemed like it would never completely go away.

“Let me show you my room,” he grinned, taking Shinji’s hand and leading him to the staircase and up to the first floor.

 

“It doesn’t have a balcony, but it has an ostentatiously big bed, as you can see,” Kaworu said, while Shinji was already analysing the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of said bed. It overlooked the hills at the back of the house, through the thick snowfall that had begun after they’d gone in.

Shinji looked away from the window and directed his attention to the reindeer patterned sheets that decked the bed. Kaworu had to remember to thank his dad for these, too. “It’s not what I imagined,” Shinji said now. He was acclimatising.

Kaworu put his rucksack down, and closed the door. “What did you imagine it was like?”

At this, Shinji shrugged. “A spaceship or a meteorite, I’m not sure.”

“A castle on a cloud,” Kaworu grinned and let himself fall backwards on the bed, just in time to catch a glimpse of Shinji’s tentative smile upside-down. “I used to imagine I was living on another planet when I was little, if that counts. You can see the alien friends there,” he pointed to a spot on the wall where several stick-extraterrestrials waited. Kaworu had always been quite proud of them.

“Well, me too, but I’m not sure it was because of the same reasons,” Shinji joined him on the bed. It took another moment of breathing, and then he let out a habitual world-weary sigh. “It’s smaller than I thought.”

Kaworu appreciated his own overturned room. “It seemed much bigger when I was smaller.” Shinji let out a good natured puff of laughter. Well, it was technically true. “Would you like to have wine and cinnamon rolls now or shall I go and pillage the kitchen for lunch?”

A question worthy of the moments of consideration it ensued. “I guess,” Shinji said, which otherwise would have sounded like saying _yes_ when one asked you whether you’d like coffee or tea with your breakfast. However, in Shinji’s case, this usually signified an inclination towards the former.

“Dad’s nice, most of the time,” Kaworu added now, hoping to turn that inclination into more of a certainty.

“I guess,” Shinji reiterated. One, two, three, he sighed again. The snowflakes were as big as they were wild outside.

“He’s a few years away from knitting and sending us personalised sweaters during the holidays,” Kaworu went on. Finally, Shinji sketched another smile. “Therefore, you should get acquainted soon, these are not easy to come by.”

“You’d know.”

It was then that tiny claws started raking at the corner of the door. _That was fast_ , Kaworu thought, getting up and going to let Tabris in. “All done with your lunch?” he asked with a side-look at her. As an answer, she licked her nose, stretched, and jumped on his bed, bee-lining for Shinji.

“She takes her holidays very seriously,” Shinji grinned at him now, petting her head.

It was one of these sights that instantly warmed Kaworu’s heart; so much, too, that it even started to melt. “We should learn,” he made careful steps towards joining them.

It took an entire cuddling session, with Tabris seemingly trying to absorb every ounce of warmth in the room as a retribution for the snow trek she had been subjected to, but Shinji eventually took a less wary breath. “Lunch sounds good.”

“It does.” It sounded amazing, actually, now that the warmth had made them feel the strain of the journey.

 

 _Maybe it_ is _too big_ , Kaworu pondered as he went from one room to the next on the ground floor, looking for his dad or... well, he hoped nobody other than his dad _was_ home. Yet. Everybody else tended to be a _little_ too excited for comfort, during the holidays. He closed the door to grandma’s special guest room and finally got to the last one on the hall, which held their old clothes, marmalade reserves, 20 years’ worth of vinyl records, and the staircase to the basement.

They hadn’t made any alteration to it in a long time; there were patches where the paint had peeled off and left the brick wall in plain sight. It was kind of cold and airy and unfairly well lit, thanks to the big, rickety window which looked out on their backyard and, further ahead, on the hills and forest. Kaworu quite liked it, for unnameable reasons.

So did Tabris, as could be seen from the fact that she was currently being engulfed in a moth-eaten sweater, which was too old even for Kaworu to steal. She was purring a storm, too.

“We’re home,” Kaworu said, from the doorway.

His dad – because _someone_ had to help Tabris make herself her woollen cocoon – smiled as he held her to his chest. “Yes, I think a little bird told me that.”

 

Before undertaking his exploration, he’d left Shinji in the main living room, where he had a vague suspicion that his dad kept their photo albums, stacked somewhere at the top or bottom of the bookshelves – so there was something for him to do. They had looked in the kitchen when they got back downstairs, and found the table in there already set for two people, while a pot of soup steamed on the cooker, but Shinji had been adamant that they oughtn’t eat before introductions were made. Kaworu had tried to plead, but it had been in vain.

Now, they found Shinji, rather than looking through emotionally-compromising child pictures, leafing through the crocheting books set on the coffee table (which were never touched by Kaworu’s grandma, as she was a free spirit; his dad, however, was a devoted fan). His dad was still holding Tabris – although he’d had to set her down earlier in order to give Kaworu a metaphorically bone-crushing hug – and that was probably a good thing, since she covered the best part of him. And, despite his prior misgivings, Shinji kept himself quite steady while introducing himself.

“I’m charmed,” was his dad’s eventual verdict (after he’d used the occasion to show him his current favourite crocheting patterns), and Kaworu grinned unhelpfully when he saw Shinji come dangerously close to blushing. Then he turned to Kaworu as a sudden afterthought. “I made a cake.” Then back to Shinji, with a pleasant smile. “I hope you like figs.”

“I,” Shinji blinked, trying to make a swift decision. “I do,” he chose.

His dad grinned and adjusted the Tabris cocoon in his arms. “Oh, I’m ever so glad. Wait just a moment,” he said, already going away towards the secret cupboards he used to stash his cakes in.

Kaworu recognised his moment to intervene. “Maybe lunch first?” As an addendum, he took Shinji’s hand in his, finding it both cold and clammy. He gave it a strong squeeze.

His dad (and Tabris) turned to look at them with something in between astonishing surprise and mild distress. “You’ve not eaten yet?” Even Tabris felt the necessity to run free as they were ushered to their seats.

 

“I can’t believe this, I thought you were the only one in the family who could be a good host,” his dad continued to playfully admonish him while filling their giant bowls with soup. Kaworu had offered to help, but the only response had been a disappointed tut-tut.

“I’m sorry,” Kaworu said for the thirteenth time, grinning at him as he set a steaming, snowflake-patterned bowl in front of Shinji.

Shinji, who was apparently giving himself a mild headache trying to decide whether to admit that part of the blame stood with him or to keep himself in his father’s good graces. “Thank you,” he said to his bowl. “It was my idea,” he then admitted. Kaworu made a mental note to give him both an extra blanket and a kiss for it later.

“Oh, well,” his dad sighed, placed a similar bowl in front of Kaworu, and then smiled again. “He should have been more persuasive.”

From underneath his fringe, Kaworu sent Shinji a conspiratorial glance and smile. Shinji took note of it, and had to bite his lip in order not to smile back. Kaworu made another mental note.

“Bon appétit. I’ll have you know I had to stop quite a few lovely neighbours from stuffing a chicken in it, so I hope it will taste good.” Both Kaworu and Shinji glanced from their bowls to him and back again. Then his dad sympathetically and strategically excused himself to go back to shovelling the garden, leaving them alone after Tabris rose from the carpet to follow him.

For a few moments, Shinji remained blinking at the open doorway. “Your dad looks like you – a bit,” he eventually said in a partial whisper.

“So we’ve been told. Isn’t it strange?” Kaworu grinned. After all, he and his siblings were all adopted. “Grandma refuses to see it, but they say it’s because he’s taller than me and the perspective is different.”

Shinji laughed – a tiny bit. “No, it’s not that apparent.”

“Well,” Kaworu smiled, and finally remembered to let himself fully relax in his seat. Another moment passed, and he glanced from his bowl to Shinji now. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Famished,” Shinji agreed, drumming his fingers over the spoon.

Kaworu let out a laugh, and picked up his own spoon.

 

The cake arrived when the evening had well set in, and the snowfall outside had found a steady, calm rhythm. It was brought on small wooden plates, on which his dad used to serve Far Breton when they were younger. After trying to make himself into the good host he was supposed to be, Kaworu had eventually fallen back into self-indulgence, brought some pillows, a few blankets, and his cat, and made a window seat in one of the upper rooms into a really cosy place. He’d just been telling Shinji about the lovely neighbours his dad mentioned when the latter finally found their hideout.

“You should see what we’ve done with the attic,” he said while handing each of them a plate and a teaspoon. “There’s a perfect place for blanket forts for anyone determined enough to carry everything up there. No heating yet, but it’s not nearly as windy as it used to be.”

“What about the owls?” Kaworu asked, seeing that Shinji had made the great tactical decision of starting his cake. After asking the question, Kaworu followed his example.

Now having his hands free, his dad started petting Tabris, asleep in an armchair near them. Her feet moved slightly from time to time. No doubt, she was dreaming of her past adventures of running with her pack through moonlit forests. “They’re still there, somewhere. In between the ceiling and the roof, I imagine. You can hear them from the second floor.”

“Poor them,” Kaworu mused at his plate.

“This is really good,” Shinji, however, uncharacteristically chimed in, staring in surprise at his slice of cake.

The reaction was immediate, as his dad switched his attention from Tabris to him with a radiant smile. “You like it? Remind me to bake you one before you go.”

Which made Shinji openly gape. “Did you put coffee in it?” Kaworu asked, analysing his own plate.

“And some clove powder and hazelnuts. Grandma made the cream cheese frosting. She had to go visit a friend, she said to tell you she’s sorry not to have been here to welcome you two,” his dad supplied.

“That’s alright,” Kaworu smiled, then looked at Shinji. “It’s not far, maybe we can go on a visit in few days.”

Shinji looked at him, pondered the implications, took into account the quality of the cream cheese, and finally answered. “We could.”

“Don’t postpone it too long, though,” his dad said, reaching for the door. “More of you are gonna arrive later this week, and then they’ll all want to come with.”

“More?” Kaworu voiced out, and he had a dim impression that Shinji had whispered that at the same time.

“Just a few,” his dad grinned from the doorway, and then left the room, having done his parental duty by giving them a few days’ warning.

Kaworu blinked at the open door. Then he turned his head and saw Shinji processing the news with the help of big spoonfuls of cake. He waited, and when his slice was finished, he offered some of his own too. Shinji took a spoonful, although a smaller one.

“It’s going to be alright,” Kaworu said, pressing their legs together underneath their blankets.

Shinji shrugged, quietly beating a tune on his plate with his spoon. “I guess,” he allowed; thought for a bit. “I mean, it probably is.”

“I could tell you some embarrassing stories beforehand so you’ll know who you’ll be dealing with,” he offered, along with more of his cake.

“Maybe,” Shinji said, taking another uncertain piece from it. “I really want the recipe,” he admitted.

Kaworu grinned. “Well, he’ll give it to you. But he’s going to make you one either way.”

It was all to the cake’s credit that Shinji didn’t seem against that notion. So, after sharing the last morsels left on his plate and sitting in denial for several minutes, Kaworu eventually got up and tiptoed downstairs for seconds.

 

* * *

 

_Oh, it's very pleasant when you have found your little den_

_With your name written up on the door. 1_

 

It was almost impossible, Kaworu thought, to be in a home decor shop without getting excited. Especially, he annotated, when you were there with the _intent_ (and means) to buy something. It was always the pillows that did it for him, and the blankets, not to mention the _storage boxes_.

 _Still, I should probably go through with this rather quickly, this time,_ he sighed inwardly while looking over the new scented candles collections. It was almost unfair. With another sigh, he grabbed one with pumpkin and cinnamon and added it in the basket, amongst a few charming plant pot decorations, two small, empty picture frames, and a strange glass bottle. If this went according to plan, he wouldn’t have where to put everything in.

He sometimes wondered whether it would have been a better career choice to work in a shop like this instead of a café. Certainly, with the exception of wrapping people’s presents, it would have been less hectic. Apart from that, though, the smell of ground coffee on his clothes would have only been substituted with the one of incense, the atmosphere was more or less the same, although people were prone to walking around more, and the lightning and seasonal decorations were pretty much the same. Kaworu hadn’t missed much.

For a change, he looked at various reed diffusers, and then at some china coffee sets, and walked on towards what mattered. In went a set of autumn-y pillow cases (for the couch), a harmless-looking desk clock, two rolls of nice wrapping paper, and three bookends shaped like different friendly animals (the snails were his favourite).

By the end of it, he thought he’d done a pretty neat job. Then, on the way to the cashier, he saw the best star-shaped blanket. That one didn’t go in the basket because, as anticipated, there was no place left for it. So, instead, he carried it the rest of the short way.

 

“That wasn’t so bad,” he murmured to himself while trying to fish his phone out of a pocket that seemed to have vanished under his poncho.

It was hard, being an autumn edition beacon of indulgent shopping when people were milling about him. Finally, phone in hand, he managed to check the time – still in his favour. _Right, then_ , he steeled himself for a plunge in the crowd, and directed himself to a bus station.

 

“Hi,” he said, with a grin, even though the paper bags kind of cut into his hand as he used the other one to hold his phone. “Do you need anything?”

Whether it was bad connection or the continuous rattling of the bus, Shinji sounded a little distracted. “Hi.” Then he paused and, “Hazelnuts. I mean, I think so. Not sure, but that’s what I remember.”

Kaworu made a mildly chastising mental list, wondering whether there were any grocery stores on his way now. “Alright. Anything else?”

This time, the pause was longer – which wasn’t a problem because, with the traffic apparent outside the bus window, Kaworu wasn’t going anywhere soon. “Nutmeg,” Shinji eventually answered, voice more muffled in what was presumably an attempt to hold the phone up with his shoulder.

“Okay. I’ll be there in a short while.” Superior travelling deities willing, that is.

Shinji made a vague acquiescing sound. “Have a safe trip,” he said, with some actual, palpable amusement, and ended the call.

 

 _It’s an enigma_ , Kaworu thought, walking down wind-blown streets. _There’s something mystical about people able to live near train stations._ At the moment, the wind sometimes succeeded in dulling the sound, sometimes in amplifying it. Vacantly, Kaworu peered at the sky, and, through the rows of wires, found it characteristically gray.

At a street corner, he stopped to frown and look around. The buildings more or less looked the same, on this weather. Bracing himself, he turned to look against the wind towards the end of the street. There was a closed gardening shop at its next corner. _So I have to take a left,_ he decided, with a good deal of relief.

A little over ten minutes (and two train departures) later, he was pretty sure he got to the right place. Right. He’d have to learn the way pretty soon. They’d been repairing the intercom since the last time he’d been there, so he let himself into the lobby. It wasn’t until he was inside that he realised how cold the wind had been. Breathing into hands which were still clutching the shopping bags, he chanced a glance at the temporarily rickety lift the building provided.

 _It’s only the third storey_ , he provided himself with a polite excuse, and took the stairs. If anything, the climb ought to warm him up.

 

_And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet_

_And there's not a speck of dust on the_ floor. **  
**

 

He liked to knock a different tune every time, an activity which, so far, seemed to go widely unappreciated. “I have a doorbell, you know,” Shinji cared to mention as soon as he opened the door.

“So do I,” Kaworu smiled. “You’ve yet to use it, however.”

Once he stepped inside, another train departure metaphysically rattled the windows. Shinji seemed undeterred, so there was definitely something mystical about him.

Holding his poncho in his arms, Kaworu took a moment to take in the place this time around too – it was still in a subtle, but continuous changing process, and he found a strange satisfaction in finding proof of it. The walls were a pale blue, made paler when the sunlight filtered in through Shinji’s thin white drapes. Around those, and to the right of the closed balcony, part of the train station could be seen, hence the sound.

It had taken a while for Shinji to find the apartment – a process which had been, as a rule, more seen to through the corner of their eyes than tackled head on. With the lack of any particular feeling of urgency, and with a few months’ searching, he had preserved enough energy in order to put everything in order during the very first days, before Kaworu had even had a change to glance upon it. Now, quite a while later, it looked a bit chilly, a bit neat, but still cosy, in a way – which was pretty much like Shinji, Kaworu mused.

Against the blue walls, a sort of old, heavy, dark wood furniture seemed to keep the room fastened to the ground. It had come together with the apartment, and Shinji hadn’t minded, had seemed quite relieved that, for example, he wasn’t in need of a new bedstead or a desk. Kaworu had good-humouredly suggested that he looked like a thoughtful young poet while he was sitting at his desk, poring over the plans for the upcoming theatrical season, which compliment Shinji had received with a frown, and then with an unenthusiastic grimace.

He had, nonetheless, taken over every piece of furniture.. Gradually, but determinedly. A simple, wooden bookshelf had been installed on the wall beside the desk, and it did hold the bigger part of Shinji’s papery and pencil-y possessions, but a fair amount still found its way, though neatly, all over the rest of the apartment. Over the desk, the short wardrobe, the dining table, the old, but tremendously comfortable armchair that had been squeezed in a corner.

Kaworu was a floor-lamp person, but Shinji proved himself to be more of a desk-lamp one, when given the choice. There was no carpet, but there was less room to walk around than at Kaworu’s space, so one didn’t necessarily feel the lack of it. One didn’t necessarily feel the lack of space either, but that had probably something to do with Shinji’s covert neatness.

At least the bed was big. They hadn’t had the pleasure of a full one before.

Overall, it was a small apartment, which looked like a small underwater cave at night and like an overzealous nest in the morning, and, sometimes, it only seemed to get smaller.

Kaworu utterly, and hopelessly, loved it.

“I brought you some things,” he grinned, picking his paper bags up again.

Shinji, having at some point succumbed to popular expectations, had taken to occasionally wearing old sweaters at home too. It felt cosy just to look at him, sometimes. “Again?” he blinked, and then went to close the window, thus putting Kaworu out of his sonorous misery.

It was a hugging sweater this time too, on top of all that.

“You can take just part of them,” Kaworu looked at his bags too. “I don’t want to impose.”

He left them on the desk, beside a few heavily annotated sheets, and tried to be subtle while tip-toeing to the much-loved armchair. “ _Impose_ ,” Shinji huffed under his breath behind him, coming to inspect the offerings. He pulled out the most imposing thing that was waiting for him there, and stared. “Ah.”

“Isn’t it nice?” Kaworu grinned, while Shinji tried to hold the star blanket the right side up.

There was no denial. “Where would it even go?” Shinji asked instead, looking around.

It was rather more colourful than the rest of the room, even taking into consideration the other trinkets of colour Kaworu had lovingly left around (such as tin boxes for spices, a more cheery lampshade, and a couple handmade pencil holders).

Paying the question the consideration it deserved, Kaworu looked around. “Bed or the Tabris Corner?”

The Tabris Corner, as the capitals signified, had nearly been turned into an institution during the three weeks since Shinji had changed residences. It had got its name after Tabris’s first visit to inspect the place – she hadn’t seemed to like the trains either, but she had appreciated the food – and kept on growing at an almost alarming pace.

It was the small space between Shinji’s desk and the wall. Unused for anything else, the place in question was occupied by two box stools, containing more papers and books, and an oversized pillow on top of one of them, which for unknown reasons hadn’t reached the bed in time to escape Tabris’s domination. Shinji regarded it now, pursed his lips, and carefully deposited the star blanket on top of the pillow.

“Charming,” he decreed.

It was a dash of colour, and it didn’t disturb the overall ambiance. Kaworu was content. He was also happy that the feeling he hadn’t been aware he’d lost was coming back to his fingers. Slowly, he sank deeper into the armchair, trying to become one with its honeycomb pattern.

“Honey or milk?” Shinji asked, after having put to good use two of the bookends (the hedgehog ones, not the snails, since affection went both ways).

Completely comfortable, Kaworu pulled the sleeves of his sweater over his hands. “Both.”

Shinji smiled, and once he’d made a few steps around the armchair he ruffled Kaworu’s hair, making him laugh. Before any retaliation could ensue, he disappeared into the niche that they’d decided to call the kitchen. Kaworu looked for a moment after him, then settled back in his seat.

 _Well, he doesn’t look particularly down_ , he mused. Kaworu remembered having felt quite sad after the first rush of excitement when he’d started living alone. Granted, Shinji wasn’t exactly prone to excitement; instead, there just seemed to be a more relaxed set to his shoulders lately. Which was nice, in itself. He’d even joked once or twice about his aunt saying that they were missing their bi-weekly “healthy food dinner”, as they had dubbed his cooking nights. That was nice, too.

“What are you making?” he asked by the way of that, examining the small bag of nutmeg he’d bought.

There was a small clatter of mugs which preceded his answer. “A pie. I hope,” Shinji said, invisible in his niche.

“With hazelnuts?” Kaworu followed, now taking out a second small package and examining that too.

“And nutmeg,” he agreed, pouring water into the already introduced mugs.

Kaworu was in love; but, then again, he’d been so for several years already. “There’s a fair,” he said. “Well, not really a _fair_ – an adoption weekend, this week. I thought we could go, there will be some people from the animal shelter I used to go to.”

The last part had been said while letting his eyes follow Shinji as he crossed the room with two mugs that were just at the limit of being oversized. Once he got his, he waited for Shinji to push away the music sheets that covered his desk chair, and then to get himself comfortable without yet spilling his tea on the rug-less floor. Then, he put on his nicest smile and gazed at him for a moment.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t go,” Shinji pointed out, looking as if he found it kinda hard not to smile back, despite the valiant effort.

“Great,” Kaworu grinned, less inclined to make such an effort. A couple gulps of tea managed to disperse the last memory of the windy weather outside. “Can I help with the pie?”

Shinji looked up from where he was surreptitiously glancing at a music sheet leaning halfway over the corner of the desk. “It’s all yours.”

 

It so happened that he had completely meant that. Sometime after they’d finished their tea, Shinji had handed him a post-it note with a much summarized recipe and directed himself, little by little, towards his bed, seemingly intending to look over some of his papers. By the time the pie finally got in the oven, he was already asleep.

Kaworu hadn’t expected this.

Neither had Shinji, apparently – half of him leaning precipitously over the edge of the bed while he appeared to be using the sheets as a very uncomfortable, although convenient, pillow. There was no blanket in the picture either, which was as expected as it was worrying. Kaworu held in a sigh and approached him with a normal amount of quietness. There really wasn’t any need for anything more than that, given that the windows still seemed to ring with the sound of departing trains every now and then.

Gingerly, he took hold of his legs and the arm that was still dangling close to the floor, and entered a short and careful process of moving him to a more central position on the bed. The sheets slid to the floor, but Kaworu had just the right amount of confidence to believe that he could put them in order again.

Although not quite awake, Shinji still pulled him a little closer before he had the chance to pull back. Kaworu smiled. It was the little things. But, since he was already there, and Shinji was no longer facing the danger of falling on the cold floor, he leant into the hug too. Another train passed faintly outside, but this time it just felt cosy – cosy to be in here when it was out there, cosy to stand still while it moved away.

Since Shinji still seemed disinclined to admit that he was waking up, Kaworu pressed his lips to his cheek, still bearing faint creases from his improvised pillow. Talking about that – Kaworu sighed, and finally pushed himself away, to start gathering back the wayward sheets. First, however, he pulled a blanket over Shinji’s shoulders.

Then, he went in search of a stapler.

 

It went well, for all of thirty minutes. Kaworu managed to pick up, order, and staple, not only the sheets that had fallen on the floor, but also the other ones which lay in not quite adequate places around the room. By the end of it, the place looked, if not larger, then at least safer to walk through without fearing the destruction of various documents. He’d also arranged Shinji’s pens and pencils by colours and functions. There wasn’t much to do, and he kept the oven on a small flame, so the pie was probably going to take longer than planned.

After washing their mugs, with no signs of distress or awareness from Shinji, Kaworu grabbed one of his hoodies and decided to finally brave the world outside. He opened the balcony door as carefully as possible, wary of sudden sounds, and then stepped out. He blinked at the buildings splayed in front of him, and at the railway station, which looked somewhat smaller than he’d imagined, from this angle.

It wasn’t that bad. There were a few sparrows pecking at the balustrade, and an old umbrella, and the three pots of basil and thyme Shinji had agreed to keep there. Squinting at what small portion of the horizon he could see, Kaworu ventured a brave presumption that the sun was going to come out of the clouds, somewhere in the distance.

Then another train entered the station and he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t shut the door and rushed to do it now, in the midst of screeching rails. A brazen wind pushed his hair into his eyes, and he frowned at the now-closed door, and then at the stationary train. The same wind pushed at him for a few more minutes, making his fingers ache even as he held Shinji’s hoodie close to his body, until he eventually surrendered and went back inside.

Caught in such musings, he opened the door in time for another train departure, and he grimaced just as he pushed it closed again. It was warm inside, at least.

Playing a bit with the hoodie’s sleeves, he directed a wary glance towards Shinji. Although, impressively enough, it seemed like he wasn’t, Kaworu still ventured to ask, “Are you awake?”

Because, cold as he was, Kaworu really wanted a hug. Or, more specifically, something like a few hours’ long hug, possibly with the accompaniment of a few soft pillows and a warm blanket. It was one of those few things he sometimes actually yearned for. Kaworu didn’t consider himself a particularly affectionate person, even if he liked being friendly with those around him. He’d never been particularly prone to physical touch, and so it had been something new, exhilarating, and scary, in the beginning, to feel himself so steadily drawn to someone. It still felt so, sometimes.

Thinking better of it, he went to check on the pie; he still kept the hoodie on, however.

 

“Why did you let me sleep?”

Kaworu had been solving crosswords in the armchair for the past half an hour, in between rereading passages from _Matilda_. Now, he looked at Shinji with an expression blank enough to speak for itself.

“I mean, ugh...” Shinji ran a hand down his face, then thought better of it and pushed it through his hair. “I hate sleeping during the day.”

“Are you still tired?”

Shinji offered an articulate shrug. “I don’t know.” Then he glanced at Kaworu, and he still looked sleepy enough to make him unable to hold in a smile. “Is the pie done?” Shinji asked, after efficiently missing the reaction.

“Took it out of the oven...” he thought, “... forty minutes ago.”

“Ugh,” Shinji voiced again, head back in his hands. Afterwards, he promptly let himself fall back on the bed, the legendary amount of two entire hours of sleep evidently taking its toll on him.

Kaworu watched him for a few more moments, an amused smile lingering on his lips. Then, “Can I join you?”

Not to give the world any ideas about his ameliorating state of mind, Shinji first let out a weary sigh. It almost seemed like he wasn’t going to follow that with anything, when “Please.”

Patience paid out in the end, his dad used to say (usually while making pancakes). Kaworu had hardly ever doubted that. “I added some more cinnamon on top, I hope you don’t mind,” he said while Shinji made space under the blanket for him too. It wasn’t even cold.

There was a vague sound of dissent, but by then Kaworu was already being enveloped in warmth, so it didn’t quite register. Maybe it had been cold, after all. Just a bit.

 

It was later discovered that Kaworu wasn’t as good a house-spouse as he would have wanted himself to be. He and Shinji were still lying in bed, side by side and absent-mindedly playing with each other’s fingers as they listened to the muffled chirps of sparrows and the coming and going of trains outside. At some point, somebody in the next building had started listening to jazz, but it had been a short-lived attempt.

Shinji had once said that he enjoyed the sounds, among others, because it gave him a free pass to practice his cello inside. Nobody was going to comment on _that_ , with the industrial era re-enacting its beginnings outside.

Somebody had said that people living near waterfalls don’t hear the water. Kaworu wondered whether Shinji was going to be that way too; seemed unlikely, with his relationships to sounds. Besides, there was no reason to stop hearing it when one liked it.

There was a brook near his childhood home, but no waterfall.

It was only by chance, but Kaworu had found a few yet unsorted sheets under his pillow, around this time. Small yellow notebook pages, seemingly torn from it in a rush. Shinji had a steady enough hand, way steadier than Kaworu’s own, so it was hard to distinguish the lines he’d drawn from the ones that had been already there.

“Have you run out of staff paper again?” Kaworu had thought he’d been pretty careful not to let that happen.

Without answering, Shinji stared blankly at the papers, his fingers drumming a fanfare on Kaworu’s palm. Kaworu calmly kept a steady tempo on his index finger.

He looked over the notes several times in search of a melody. Finally, he blinked. “This is something new,” he said, holding the sheets farther away from his face now he no longer needed to see them well.

Shinji had been kind of pressing his cheek into his shoulder. At the sound of his voice, he raised his head, gave the sheets another blank look, pressed his fingers on Kaworu’s lifeline in a demonstration of a bold double bar line.

“It’s...,” he started, but stopped immediately after, making one of his wide array of faces. This one hung somewhere in between indecision and inconvenience, with one afterthought sprinkle of timidity.

Without freeing his lifeline from pressure, Kaworu turned on his side towards him. He was already beyond saving, anyway. “Tell me.”

At last, the idea of glancing at him seemed to cross Shinji’s mind, and with that he finally relaxed back into the mattress. His eyebrows always did amazing things to his face, Kaworu remarked in a sidenote. Still, he had to focus and stay determined if he was ever to get an answer.

That plan increased in difficulty once Shinji idly slid his fingers over to his heart line and offered him a lovely, indulgent smile. “I was going to.”

“Can I listen?” But he didn’t mean the words. He meant the melody.

It was still something so beautifully unfamiliar for him, Shinji writing music. It had only happened twice before, so far; once when he’d been utterly excited, and once during a pleasant period of downcastness. At least now all the papers made sense.

It was simple, it wasn’t anything that was going to win him an award, and it didn’t have to be. That wasn’t the point. From the first time, Kaworu had fallen abruptly and wholly in love with these notes that seemed to say in three staves what he once would have dedicated arias to. It was proof that even Kaworu had his own kind of selfishness, in the fact that his liking of these compositions was also intermingled with his liking of being the one to understand them. But, then again, Kaworu had never claimed that he wasn’t selfish. At times.

Shinji had once told him that he was reading too much into it, that they were just phone doodles turned to sound. Kaworu hadn’t denied that, either. They might as well have been. He loved them anyway.

He wondered whether all this could be read on his face.

From the way Shinji was staring at him, at least part of it could. “I guess,” was his answer, and with a shrug he brushed away all the unspokenness that had gathered around them. “Some other time, when it’s finished. Somehow.”

Kaworu grinned, lightness and clouds in his chest, so many that he decided he wanted to share them, so he pulled him close, burying his head in his shoulder and his hands in his soft sweater. Shinji smelled like old wood and camomile.

The light and clouds visibly got through, too, because he almost immediately started laughing to make space in his chest again. “You can laugh if it ends up being a Cubist take on _Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star_. I can’t tell if it is or not, so far.”

So he made Kaworu laugh too. “That sounds pretty amazing, nevertheless.”

“Sure,” Shinji said, previous to running his hand through Kaworu’s hair.

He then tightened his hug until Kaworu felt his soul pop in contentedness (alongside a few vertebrae).  It was a pleasant ending to a pleasant cuddle, too, since he afterwards pulled away and got out of bed. Getting up too, Kaworu absently wondered whether he ought to even attempt to pet down his hair; he chose not to.

Shinji paused and turned back to him midway through opening the window to the now dark grey and pink twilight outside. “Do you want to come with me and take the pie to my aunt?”

An affirmative answer was already on Kaworu’s tongue, but he stopped to check the time and think of Tabris. He’d left home relatively early, and it wasn’t quite so late in the evening that she’d start missing him and/or her daily walk. He had a couple hours left to spare.

He wished he was wearing his daisy sweater. Shinji’s aunt had seemed to especially appreciate that one, during past visits. Still – the one he had on today had a giraffe on it; that ought to be enough. He grinned. “Just for a short while.”

 

* * *

 

Tabris either loved or loathed it here. Despite Shinji’s misgivings and not-so-subtle advice over the phone in the morning, Kaworu had decided that yes, taking Tabris to the adoption fair was a good idea indeed. So, garnished with her green fairy harness and purple leash, she now strode alongside them on the park alley. Kaworu would have given her even more freedom than that, but he feared for the pigeons.

There were also a lot of pets around, and they had tried to say hi to every single one of them. Or, well, Kaworu had indulged himself by petting as many fluffy heads as possible while Tabris had been perfectly regal in her behaviour. At least, until she’d encountered the kittens and the puppies. Then, she had gone completely out of her known universe. It had been fun to watch her staring at wiggly things less than half her size while they went round her in circles.

That had kept them busy for at least a quarter of an hour, and they had left Shinji to meet and greet various pets on his own. Since it was stated by multiple sources that petting animals had only beneficial, relaxing effects on one’s mind and body, they guessed it could not hurt him. The last time Kaworu had glanced around, he’d found Shinji gravely scrutinising a large den of puppies. Now, that he’d finally decided to bring Tabris back into her comfort zone by taking her in his arms, he looked around again. He found him in the same place.

“Is anything exciting happening here?” he asked once they got close enough.

Shinji shrugged. There were a few children around, playing and running around together with enthusiastic puppies, but there were also some more sleepy remnants around the blankets constituting their temporary den. “They’re small,” Shinji noted.

They were, at the moment; smaller than Tabris, even, and all kinds of earthy colours. “Of course. They’re tiny, look at how small their teeth are,” he grinned once one of them yawned. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shinji smile. “But give them only a year and, I think—” and he freed one hand in order to point to his mid-thigh. “This tall.”

“Oh,” Shinji said, looking at his hand. Then he turned his attention back to the puppies. Eventually, he bent down and picked up a newly awakened one.

It looked soft and warm in his arms. Kaworu petted its sleepy head a bit. “Cute.”

Shinji made a non-committal sound, petting it with a great amount of seriousness. When the pup seemed to have woken up a bit more, it pushed its nose into Shinji’s neck, then chin, getting gradually more excited about the situation he found itself in. Kaworu could relate, distantly.

All the while, Shinji’s eyebrows remained in a sober scrunch. It lasted several minutes. Then his face relaxed the slightest bit and he looked at Kaworu. “The building doesn’t have anything against animal owners.”

Kaworu looked at him, and then at the dog, and back at him. He let himself raise his eyebrows in question; his mouth was too busy not smiling to say anything.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shinji got back to frowning, this time at the dog.

Characteristically, Kaworu smiled. “I didn’t know either.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't do this, kids. Adopt your pets responsibly.  
> So this is done! It was nice, and fun, and great, and greatly postponed, but it's done! Thank you for reading these two stories, both of which ended up while longer than originally planned. It was really. Nice. Thank you so much ~
> 
> 1 _Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat_ , from T. S. Eliot's _Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats_.


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